“I’m so hormonal.”

“Men’s brains just work differently.”

“Ask your doctor about the little blue pill today.”

We are constantly receiving and producing messages about gender and biomedicine in our everyday lives. This course provides a survey of some of the most common ways we learn about and perform gender, such as biology textbooks and pharmaceutical commercials, paying close attention to how biomedical authority has the power to produce “truths” about gender. In addition, we will build and use an analytical toolkit from Communication to evaluate and critique how biomedical messages about gender are produced and conveyed.

Upon completion of this course, students will be able to:

Describe different conceptions of gender and sex from biomedical and social scientific fields.

Identify claims about gender and sex in media, educational materials, and medical literature.

Explain the mediating role of communication technologies in the production and circulation of biomedical knowledge about gender.

Evaluate and critique the ways in which hierarchies of gender and sex are produced and maintained through biomedical claims.