ENG 6939 Fall 2022 Al-Khateeb

In this course, we will study historical and contemporary accounts of health and medicine from a rhetorical perspective and in local and global contexts. Course readings will engage us in critical conversations about what the rhetoric of health and medicine is and does and why a rhetorical perspective matters to creating accessible and equitable health care for all patients. In addition to examining historical, theoretical, and methodological perspectives, we will explore case studies that demonstrate how health and medicine are rhetorically entangled with socioeconomic, (bio)(geo)political, and neoliberal relations that shape the construction, design, and circulation of medical discourse. Understanding these entanglements helps illuminate how medical subjects get constituted and how human and nonhuman bodies come to matter (or not!) in medical discourse. These considerations can also better inform ways stakeholders (patients, practitioners, interpreters, policymakers, etc.) define, interact, and navigate health situations. This course offers students the opportunity to engage critically with current health debates and to understand how a critical rhetorical perspective can bring about ethical medical discourses and practices across contexts.