Course Details

Course offered Spring 2025

HONORS 393 A: Rhetoric of Health and Medicine (A&H / NSc, W)

HONORS 393 A: Rhetoric of Health and Medicine (A&H / NSc, W)

SLN 15200 (View UW registration info »)

Amanda Friz (Department of Communication)
Email: afriz@uw.edu

Credits: 5
Limit: 35 students

What does it mean to be healthy? What counts as an illness or disease, and why? Rather than a static quality one possesses or lacks, “health” is a practice, socially constructed and enacted via subtle rhetorical actions and social performances, informed by intersections of privilege and power.

This course takes as our starting point how language and argument shape our understanding of health, illness, and disability, and how the meaning of health has become a site of argument and controversy. Students will examine the role of rhetoric in the creation and circulation of biomedical knowledge; our complex lived experiences with illness (physical and mental); the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and disability in experiences of illness and healing; and the role of activism and advocacy in diagnosis, disease, and treatment.

Through the study of the political, ethical, and humanities-based aspects of medicine, students will become more savvy patients and, for any students who hope to wield the stethoscope one day, more insightful and compassionate health care providers.

Student Learning Goals:
– Describe how politics, social justice, economics, and rhetoric affect access to and practices of health and well-being
– Identify, describe, and apply key rhetorical concepts and develop understanding of rhetorical theory
– Articulate ways language and argument shape our broader understanding of wellness, illness, and disease
– Assess the efficacy of health activism and campaigns
– Assess the ethics of health messages that circulate in the public sphere