Class name: “Biopolitics: The Governance of Life and Death”
Taught by: Visiting Assistant Professor of Health Studies Damien Droney
Says Droney about his class:
This class is about biopolitics, a concept that has been developed especially in the work of philosopher Michel Foucault, and its applications for understanding health inequalities, violence, and medicine today. In Foucault’s work, biopolitics is part of a significant shift in power in the modern era in which life becomes something to be governed. My goal is for students to gain a new lens for analyzing how power works today, particularly as it relates to issues of health and medicine.
Droney on why he wanted to teach this class:
One of the reasons why I teach this class is because of the curiosity of many students toward this sort of theoretical approach. I find that students have often heard about Foucault or biopolitics and are interested in figuring out what it’s all about. I also find it to be really relevant for understanding the world today. Biopolitics helps us to analyze cases in which some lives are valued more than others or even in which death is orchestrated in the name of life or health.
Droney on what makes this class unique:
Biopolitics tends to crop up in a lot of health studies classes, but what’s special about a seminar is that we’re able to take a deep dive on a single topic. We get to read philosophers, literary scholars, and social scientists who have taken up the concept of biopolitics, developed it in a number of ways, and applied it to understand life and death. With the seminar format, we get to puzzle through all these approaches together and learn from each other.