Madina Agénor
Visiting Lecturer in Women's and Gender Studies
Madina Agénor is an interdisciplinary scholar with a background in social epidemiology and women's and gender studies. Dr. Agénor's research focuses on the structural and social determinants of health inequities, with particular interests in racism, gender, sexuality, bodily autonomy, health care, and policy. For the past 20 years, she has examined how health care (e.g., access to care, patient-provider communication, health care discrimination) and policy (e.g., health policies, state laws) factors shape sexual and reproductive health inequities among minoritized racialized, sexual orientation, and gendered groups in the U.S. Her most recent research pertains to how discrimination in health care and the law, including racism, sexism, heterosexism, and cisgenderism, shape the health and health care experiences of marginalized groups, including Black and LGBTQ+ people. Her current work pertains to antiblackness, bodily autonomy, illness, and healing among Black communities in North America and the Caribbean in the context of slavery and its afterlife. 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 and a Master of Public Health (MPH) in Sociomedical Sciences from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. She completed her undergraduate education at Wellesley College and Brown University, from which she holds a bachelor’s degree (AB) in Community Health and Gender Studies. Dr. Agénor is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Behavioral and Social Sciences at Brown University School of Public Health. From Martinique and Haiti, she grew up in Washington, DC.
Education
- B.A., Brown University
- M.P.H., Columbia University in the City of New York
- Ph.D. or J.D., Harvard University
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.
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Health Activism
WGST210
Health is a powerful manifestation of the economic, political and cultural substructures of society. This course uses a public health approach, a focus on health at the population level and attention in the distribution of disease, to explore the strategies related to and the power of health activism. Focusing on examples throughout U.S. history and in the present day, we will apply an intersectional lens to understand how inequalities (e.g. race, class, gender and sexual identity) are embodied via health and impact individuals and communities. Using a case study approach we will examine social movements (eg, AIDS activism, reproductive justice, workers’ rights), as well as structural efforts (eg, healthcare reform and legal challenges) to discuss collective struggles and successful strategies for transformation.