PST 320-01 - Applied Policy Analysis

4 credits (Fall)

International Adoption, Reproductive Technologies, and the Implementation of Policy. Is access to reproduction a basic human right? How do people seek to have the “experience” of reproduction? How should access to that experience be regulated? Surrogacy has become a common term within the discourse of reproduction, and it can range from adopting other people’s children to buying other people’s gametes and even to renting out other people’s bodies. Given the various forms of appropriation, expropriation and commodification that now attend this discourse, how do we define the boundary between surrogacy as slavery and surrogacy as entrepreneurship? This course will explore the policy ramifications of these and other questions as we reflect on the concurrent and often conflicting interrelationship between “market” and “polis” models in regard to the policy-making process. To that end, perspectives from economics, biology, and literature will be brought to bear on behalf of the urgencies that compel relief and the cautionary tales that give us pause.

Prerequisite: PST 220. Any interested student is strongly encouraged to contact one of the professors.
Instructor: Andrews, Powell, Queathem