TCID 345 Rhetorics of Health, Medicine, and Social Justice
This course is informed by the rhetorics of health and medicine, an interdisciplinary field that attends to
how language and symbols are used in public health, medicine, nursing, and communities. Understanding
how contemporary language plays a powerful role in healthcare and communities¿especially with regard to
health equity, health access, and inclusion¿is the central focus of this course. The language we examine
and the power that language enacts includes patient-provider communication, pharmaceutical advertising,
government-sponsored communication, and health literacy. We analyze, critique, and design deliverables
such as case safety narratives, clinical study reports, patient materials, websites, package inserts, and
decision aids. In this course, we attend to reproductive justice, women¿s health, and disability, as well as
how racist, transphobic, and homophobic rhetorics manifest in health documents in order to examine and/
or propose alternative rhetorical strategies that move us toward justice, equity, and access.
Prerequisites
4 Undergraduate credits
Effective August 15, 2022 to present
Learning outcomes
General
- Students will be able to analyze and discuss the relationship between rhetoric, health, medicine, and social justice.
- Students will be able to critically analyze the effects of intersectional adversities experienced by multiply marginalized people in healthcare.
- Students will be able to assess reproductive justice challenges within institutional relationships and intersectional adversities.
- Students will synthesize quantitative and qualitative scholarship and research on a relevant topic in order to strengthen critical advocacy capacities for healthcare justice.
- Students will be able to analyze technical and professional communication artifacts (e.g., package inserts, websites, decision aids, etc.) using rhetorical theory in order to recognize how racist, transphobic, homophobic, and sexist language may be revised.
- After identifying a local, state, or global health issue relevant to a technical document, students will be able to critically analyze the issue and develop a social-justice focused intervention.
Fall 2022
Section | Title | Instructor | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
50 | Rhetorics of Health, Medicine, and Social Justice | Moeggenberg, Zarah Catherine | Books | Course details |