This course examines health and illness as embodied experiences profoundly influenced by cultural norms of gender and sexuality and by contemporary notions of risk and self-management. It will combine theoretical explorations of the body, subjectivity and risk with case studies of reproductive health, sexual dysfunction, ‘male’ and ‘female’ cancers, and body image disorders. The course will also examine different representations of illness and disease and the meanings they produce. How is the disordered body represented in genres such as medical imaging, documentary photography and illness autobiographies?

3,000 - 4,000 words of written work and tutorial participation (100%).

Normally offered in alternate years
10 x 1.5 hour lectures, 3 x 2 hour lecture/activity sessions and 12 x 1 hour tutorials
Lectures will be taped.

At least one of GEND1001, GEND1002, ENGL1011 or permission of the lecturer.

* Shildrick Margrit with Janet Price (1999) 'Openings on the Body: A Critical Introduction' in Janet Price and Margrit Shildrick (eds), Feminist Theory and the Body: A Reader.
* Bordo, Susan (1993) ‘Whose Body is This? Feminism, Medicine and the Conceptualization of Eating Disorders in Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body.