Sexual Health and the City
Fall 2023
Instructors
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Shanti Parikh, Professor of Sociocultural Anthropology and Chair, Department of African and African American Studies
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Denise Lieberman, Adjunct Instructor, Washington University Law School; Director and General Counsel, Missouri Voter Protection Coalition
This StudioLab course creates an engaged space for students to learn about and develop projects with a community agency around the topic of the “politics of reproduction.” The politics of reproduction refers to the intersection between politics, gender, race, and reproduction. As a StudioLab course, student teams will partner with a St. Louis reproductive and sexual health agency to explore how agencies, communities, and individuals have been affected, adjusted, and reimagine strategies to allow men and women to pursue their reproductive agency and desires. Students will use an interdisciplinary approach to understand historical, medical, legal, racialized, and sociocultural issues surrounding reproductive choice, regulation of choice, abortion, pregnancy, sex education, new reproductive technologies, and reproductive justice movements. We consider the state’s regulation of biological and social reproduction wherein increasing governance of private life, intimacy, and sexuality suggests the blurring of boundaries between public and private interests. Students will also examine the complex relationship between men’s and women’s life goals and constraints, on the one hand, and politics and public health management of sexual and reproductive health, on the other. In collaboration with their community partner, students will develop a project that addresses an identified need of the organization and the community it serves. Course readings will draw from the fields of history, legal studies, public health, feminist studies, Black Studies, policy, and anthropology.
