ANTHROPOLOGY, HEALTH AND GENDER

This course is considered optional for BA students in Social sciences and social work, but remains accessible to everyone else. The specific topic of the intersections between health and gender matters represents an especially interesting subject for students and professionals involved in social work or in the social sciences more broadly. The course especially will focus on reproduction and sexual, reproductive and maternal health.
The course is composed of lectures and seminars, during which everyone will be involved in reading and commenting academic articles and analysing other resources (press articles, audio/videos, other documents) through collective debates.

The course will introduce anthropology through an analysis of its focus on gender and health. It will present theoretical approaches to unpack the rationale and the methodologies of a gender perspective to the study of health experiences, and will especially focus on feminist anthropology and on the topics of reproduction and sexual, reproductive and maternal health. The course aims at stimulating a critical analysis of gender and health matters, especially in the domain of reproduction, at facilitating the understanding of scientific texts, and at promoting the development of oral and written skills.
At the end of the course, students will have learnt strategies to use basic theoretical concepts throughout their analysis, to read and discuss academic literature about some contemporary social phenomenon, especially around reproduction and sexual, reproductive and maternal health, and to mobilise theoretical and interpretative notions to discuss other kind of documents and resources. They will especially know how to contextualise some reproductive phenomena through an intersectional and feminist perspective, recognising and qualifying interactions of different individual, collective and institutional actors, highlighting the historical, social and political dimensions of every phenomenon, and propose a critical analysis of data and documents collected through different sources and of current narratives around reproduction.

No previous knowledge, competence or skill is required. Students will be asked to be available to participate in debates in class and to autonomously collect some material (press articles, audio-videos, other documents) to contribute to such debates.

The course is composed of different complementary moments.

The first sessions will be focusing on an introduction to anthropology, its main research questions and its main epistemological, theoretical and metholodogical tools. During these sessions, a gender perspective will be offered, illustrating how, thanks to whom and which contributions, in which contexts, and with what consequences the matter of gender has emerged within the discipline, especially concerning the domain of reproduction.

Later, the course will especially focus on research and anlysis of reproduction and sexual, reproductive and maternal health. During this period, weekly lectures will introduce debates and concepts that have emerged in the field of anthropology of reproduction, while weekly seminars will allow students to familiarise, through individual and collective presentations of readings and other material and debates in class, to the critical analysis of some elements of the reproductive experience, such as childbirth, abortion, infertility, assisted reproduction, queer reproduction, or family planning.

tudents are kindly asked to read all texts in group A and one chosen text of group B of the bibliography below or 6 among the seminar texts available in moodle, on the basis of which they will be asked to elaborate a written essay (see notes about exam).

If you have an interest in English references, please send an email to the teacher.

A: Both the following text:
Introduzione a Mattalucci, C. (a cura di) 2017. Antropologia e riproduzione. Attese, fratture e ricomposizioni della procreazione e della genitorialità in Italia, Raffaello Cortina, Milano, 2017
Ribeiro Corossacz, V. 2015. "Sesso e genere, oltre natura e cultura”, in Tempo, persona, valore. Saggi in omaggio a Pier Giorgio Solinas, Cutolo A., Grilli S., e F. Viti (a cura di), Argo, Lecce: 127-144.

B: One text among the followings:
Ferrero, L. e Pulice, E. Pluralismo etico e conflitti di coscienza nell'attività ospedaliera. Volume I. Scelte riproduttive e dibattiti sulla genitorialità, Bologna, Il Mulino
Gentile L. (cur.); Quagliarello C. (cur.); Sestito R. (cur.), 2021. Coronial. Antropologia della riproduzione e delle sessualità al tempo del Covid-19, Milano, Franco Angeli
Gribaldo, A. 2005. La natura scomposta. Riproduzione assistita, genere, parentela, Roma, Luca Sossella Editore
Guerzoni, C. 2020. Sistemi Procreativi. Etnografia dell'omogenitorialità in Italia, Milano, Franco Angeli.
Mattalucci ( a cura di), 2017. Antropologia e riproduzione. Attese, fratture e ricomposizioni della procreazione e della genitorialità in Italia, Milano, Raffaello Cortina.
Riberiro Corossacz, V. 2004. Il corpo della nazione. Classificazione razziale e gestione sociale della riproduzione in Brasile, Roma, Cisu.
Quagliariello, C. 2021. L' isola dove non si nasce. Lampedusa tra esperienze procreative, genere e migrazioni, Milano, Unicopli.

Students' work will be valued differently on the basis of a 1500-2000 words written paper about one of the topics suggested in the bibliography, drawing on the analysis of an event in the press, or publicly available selected images or videos or documents, with the support of the concpets and interpretative tools presented in the texts proposed among the references. After being marked by the teacher, the essay will be the object of an oral conversation where the knowledge of contents from the bibliography (both texts in group A and one chosen text in group B) will be verified, especially for what concerns their relations with the written paper.

The course is composed of lectures and seminars. During the seminars everyone will be involved in reading and commenting academic articles and analysing other resources (press articles, audio/videos, other documents) through collective debates.

Italian

Please contact the teacher about individual meetings.

oral

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Poverty and inequalities" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development