Health Humanities Grand Rounds with Kristina Gupta

Join the HHIVE Lab and Carolina Seminars for Health Humanities Grand Rounds with Kristina Gupta

Kristina Gupta, PhD is an Associate Professor in the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Wake Forest University. Her research interests are in the areas of contemporary asexual identities and gender, health, and science. She is the author of Medical Entanglements: Rethinking Feminist Debates about Healthcare (Rutgers University Press, 2019), a co-editor of Queer Feminist Science Studies: A Reader (University of Washington Press, 2017), and the author of a number of peer-reviewed articles.

In this talk, Professor Gupta uses the case study of transition-related care to argue for the importance of moving beyond the frameworks of disease and “medical necessity” to justify medical interventions. Frameworks of disease and ‘medical necessity’ almost invariably pathologize some who do not seek medical intervention while leaving others without social support or funding for the medical interventions they need to make their lives more livable. In place of the frameworks of disease and “medical necessity,” she proposes using frameworks such as “flourishing,” “livability,” and “fulfillment,” while recognizing that there is no perfect framework. At the end of the talk, Dr. Gupta will briefly explore the use of the language of medical necessity (as well as ‘elective’ vs. ‘essential’) during the pandemic, arguing that this usage has led to the postponement of transition-related care as well as reproductive justice-related care, and she considers whether alternative frameworks like “livability” would produce different outcomes for marginalized groups and individuals.

Free an open to the public. Please register in advance at go.unc.edu/HHGRGupta

Question? Contact Irmak Saklayici (isaklayici@unc.edu)