POLI 376 - The Politics of Human Reproduction

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

What is the relationship between human reproduction and our political worlds? This course examines 19th- through 21st-century explorations of the nexus between parent-child relationships and political subjectivities, as well as the very meaning of human reproduction itself, from socialist, existentialist, feminist, critical race, anti-colonial, post-humanist, and queer theoretical perspectives, including texts by among others, Harriet Jacobs, Friedrich Engels, Saidiya Hartman, Alexandra Kollontai, Axel Honneth, Simone De Beauvoir, Frantz Fanon, Lee Edelman, Lauren Berlant, Mary Shanley, Iris Young, Audre Lorde, Donna Haraway, and Dorothy Roberts. We use this theoretical grounding to analyze a variety of contemporary political problems of human reproduction, including new legal restrictions on abortion, teratogenic environmental contamination, the intergenerational harms of racism, transnational and transracial adoption, transgender parenting, incarcerated parenthood, and new reproductive technologies. Ms. Menzel.

Prerequisite: permission of the tructor.

One 2-hour period.