ENGL 219

Fall 2019 All Classes

All Classes

Literature and Medicine

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Credit: 3 hours.

Introduction to the interchange between the medical and literary imaginations – how diseases, bodies, and minds get written about and represented culturally. The premise of the course is that ideas and experiences concerning our health are always mediated through the literature we read, the films we watch, and the stories we tell our doctors and that they tell us. Our focus will be on how literature and film have played and continue to play a crucial role in understanding health on local, national, and global scales.

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ENGL 219 class schedule data for fall 2019
	CRN	Type	Section	Time	Day	Location	Instructor	Section Details
	71513	Lecture-Discussion	D	11:00AM -11:50AM	MWF	104 English Building	Gaedtke, A	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/26/19-12/11/19 Credit: 3 hours Section Info: This course introduces students to the literature of medicine. We will take up questions at the forefront of “medical humanities”—a field that examines cultural attitudes toward illness and recovery, the dramas and power dynamics of the clinic, and the lived experiences of both doctors and patients. We will think through the ways that our experiences of health and illness are not simply given or universal but are shaped by the literature we read, the films we watch, and the stories we tell our doctors and that they tell us. In our discussions we will ask what kinds of narratives, character types, and assumptions about health and illness can be discerned from literatures of medicine and how have these changed over time. Are there alternative attitudes toward these experiences that we might be able to recognize in new or forgotten representations of health and illness? In what ways have assumptions about race, gender, sexuality, and “the human” been constructed through ideas about health, illness, and abnormality? How can health care professionals’ delivery of care be improved through forms of literary training and knowledge? The course is open to all and may be of special interest to students who are considering a future in health care. Will examine fiction, plays, essays, and films by Virginia Woolf, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Siri Hustvedt, Ian McEwan, Tony Kushner, Susan Sontag, Elaine Scarry, Arthur Frank, Rita Charon, and others.