RUSS 260

Credit: 3 hours.

Examines cultural significance of medicine and the figure of the physician, and understandings of illness and health, primarily in literature of Russia and the USSR from the 1860s to present. Asks what larger issues are at stake in the literary representation of medical practice by physicians and non-physicians alike in the Russian and Soviet contexts; investigates what medicine and literature offer each other, and the bearing on this of the latter's formal, aesthetic qualities. Considers how medical practice is conditioned by the broader culture, how medical discourse, knowingly or unknowingly, 'borrows' from, is conditioned by, or otherwise reciprocally involved with other greater or peripheral discursive spheres. Reads fiction by leading literary figures who were physicians (Chekhov, Bulgakov, Veresaev, and Aksyonov); fiction by "lay" authors about doctors and medical practice (such as Solzhenitsyn); memoirs by physicians (tales of training and practice, apologies, denunciations); memoirs by patients; 'real' and fictional case histories; theoretical and methodological readings.

This course satisfies the General Education Criteria in Fall 2022 for: