AMST 2230

Drugs and Social Justice

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2015-2016.

Drugs can heal you or poison you, set you free or land you in prison, depending on who you are and your place in the world. The course sheds light on structural inequalities that result from the production, circulation, and regulation of drugs, focusing on questions of social justice. Topics include: Bodies on Drugs (pharmaceutical drugs for trans* subjects; the medicalization of gendered bodies; bioscience and race); Drugs and Global Health (global inequities in access to drugs; colonial legacies in drug production and clinical trials); Drugs and Everyday Racism and Sexism (how people's experiences and lifeworlds are shaped by racialized and gendered dimensions of drug use and illegality); and Drugs, Law Enforcement, and Mass Incarceration (how the war on drugs intersects with racism in the US to produce the world's highest incarceration rates, while fostering violence across the globe). Throughout the course, we will examine how human rights and social justice activism shape public debates about drugs; we will also meet with local activist groups. This multi-disciplinary course is grounded in feminist studies, medical anthropology, and critical race theory, and draws on history, political science, legal studies, films, and art.

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