This interdisciplinary course will introduce students to contemporary understandings of addiction and drug and alcohol use, from a socio-cultural perspective. After examining dominant models of addiction and substance use, it focuses on drug use as a gendered practice. It addresses the question of why addiction and drug use have such prominence as medical and social problems in contemporary Western cultures and provides a range of concepts and tools for understanding their significance.

The course has a two parts:

1: Understanding Addiction

In the first part of the course, dominant models of addiction and substance dependence will be examined in detail. The focus will be on how they constitute addiction as a disorder and how this connects with notions of rationality, desire, freedom and the nature of the human body. We will investigate the continued debates about ‘what' addiction is and what these debates reveal about medical science and conceptions of health.

2: Rethinking Gender and Drugs

In the second part of the course, students will be introduced to the idea of alcohol and drug use as socio-cultural practices which occur within specific social contexts. Gender will be the central theme while the significance of  race, age and class in structuring patterns and experiences of drug use will also be explored.

This course will count as a core course in the Gender, Sexuality and Culture major and in the Health, Medicine and the Body major

By the end of the course students should be able to

1. Analyse contemporary theories of addiction
2. Analyse drug use as a gendered practice
3. Think, write and argue about alcohol and drug use as socio-cultural practices
4. Evaluate different social, legal and medical responses to drug use and addiction
5. Reflect on and discuss your own learning as it relates to the subject matter of the course.

Short papers (500 words x 3)  45%

Essay/ Project (2000 words) 35%

Tutorial attendance 5%

Tutorial facilitation  10%

In class reflective excercise 5%

24 hours of lectures and 12 hours of tutorials. 4-7 hours of independent study depending on assessment schedule.

Prerequisite: Any first year arts course

GEND1001

The prescribed reading for this course will be available in a reading brick. It will include texts from the disciplines of sociology, anthropology, history, public health, social medicine and gender studies.