Events Calendar

Slattery Center Speaker, Dr. Talia Walsh - What is wrong with health -A feminist critique of wellness culture

Thursday, 11 April, 2024

In this talk, Dr. Walsh will explore what she calls the “good health imperative" the sense that it is both rational and moral to better one’s health when one can. This imperative finds its inspiration both in ongoing research into how an individual’s lifestyle choices around consumption, activity, and sleep affect a wide variety of health outcomes. On the one hand, it seems only a positive move to worry about one’s health and to promote healthy living. On the other, the idea that the individual can become healthier by her own behavior entrenches sexist, classist, and ableist discourses. Dr. Walsh complicates the good health imperative by employing feminist critiques of other kinds of willed body modification. She argues that the good health imperative encourages the justification of rolling back certain health care resources as everyone is now able to “take charge” and become healthier. In such a view, poor health is viewed as a personal, or familial, failing and not a social one. Systemic issues such as racism, classism, sexism, and ableism are seen as largely invisible backgrounds to the “real” issue" people aren’t doing the right things for their own health.

Contact:

Sarah Kenehan

Phone: 570-941-4700

Categories:

Brennan Hall, Pearn Auditorium, (228)

320 Madison Avenue
 Scranton, PA 18510