Madina Agénor
Visiting Lecturer in Women's and Gender Studies
Madina Agénor is a Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Women's and Gender Studies at Wellesley College and an Associate Professor in the Department of Behavioral and Social Sciences at Brown University School of Public Health. Dr. Agénor is an interdisciplinary scholar with a background in social epidemiology and women's and gender studies. Her research focuses on the structural and social determinants of health inequities, with particular interests in racism, gender, sexuality, bodily autonomy, health care, and policy. She situates health and social inequities in the historical contexts that produce(d) them and attends to how marginalized groups have and continue to resist systems and institutions that create higher burdens of death, disease, and illness in their communities. She holds a Doctor of Science (ScD) in Social and Behavioral Sciences with a concentration in Women, Gender, and Health from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, a Master of Public Health (MPH) in Sociomedical Sciences from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, and a bachelor’s degree (AB) in Community Health and Gender Studies from Brown University.
Education
- A.B., Brown University
- M.P.H., Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health
- Sc.D., Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Current and upcoming courses
Gender, Race and Health
WGST214
This interdisciplinary seminar course examines health inequities in relation to race and gender, as well as class, sexuality, disability, and nation, using an intersectional lens. Intersectionality addresses how multiple power relations and systems of oppression impact the lived experiences of multiply marginalized groups in historical and social context. During this course, we will discuss the historical and theoretical underpinnings of intersectionality and its conceptual, methodological, and practical applications to health topics. We will also examine how mutually constituted forms of social inequality – including racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, cisgenderism, xenophobia, fatphobia, and ableism – shape health inequities among diverse multiply marginalized groups in differential and compounding ways in historical, social, economic, and political context as well as how multiply marginalized communities have resisted oppression and discrimination and promoted their own health and well-being. This course will address scientific racism, biomedicalization, and population control as well as care, mutual aid, and healing.