Invalid Women, Northeast Ohio Medical University

Western biomedicine has historically been dominated by male theorists and practitioners. How, then, has biomedical culture accounted for women's bodies, health, and illness? For other bodies deemed nonnonnative, including queer, trans, and non-binary bodies? Recent reporting on women's health issues and maternal mortality rates in the US, and the many personal narratives recounting inadequate attention to womenas-patients, suggests a deep-seated and ongoing problem with the way our medical system treats women. We will trace the evolution of long-standing narrative tropes and conventions that shape the stories owe tell about women’s bodies and health in literary fiction, popular culture, and medical discourse. This course can contribute to the achievment of a Graduate Certificate in Medical Ethics and Humanities, a 10-credit program that allows students to combine clinical practice with ethics consultation, education, and research. This information has been collected for the Post-Discipline Online Syllabus Database. The database explores the use of literature by schools of professional education in North America. It forms part of a larger project titled Post-Discipline: Literature, Professionalism, and the Crisis of the Humanities, led by Dr Merve Emre with the assistance of Dr Hayley G. Toth. You can find more information about the project at https://postdiscipline.english.ox.ac.uk/. Data was collected and accurate in 2021/22.