Bioethics in Contemporary Media

Catalog description

At a meeting of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, commission member David Rejeski spoke about synthetic biology and the role of popular media. Citing Captain Marvel, Spiderman, Xbox game Bioshock, Michael Crichton's novel Prey, and the movie Splice, he argued forcefully that people will fall back on these narratives long before they will ever pick up a biology book. And they are incredibly pervasive, ubiquitous and powerful. In order to better understand how these narratives engage with bioethical issues, in this course we will hone our skills of media analysis with a range of contemporary sources. In the first half of the course we will study themes such as artificial intelligence, disability studies, racial justice, and gender equity through a selection of material, primarily contemporary film. The second half of the semester will be student-selected; as a group, we will plan the material following the themes of the course and student interest, including new releases of television and film. From Frankenstein to X-Men; from Black Panther to The Handmaid's Tale, we will look towards contemporary media in order to better understand how it reflects and informs contemporary issues in bioethics and society at large.