ENGL 563

Spring 2025

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Seminar Themes and Movements
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Credit: 4 hours.

May be repeated if topics vary. Prerequisite: One year of graduate study of literature or consent of instructor.

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CRN Type Section Time Day Location Instructor Section Details
32280
Lecture-Discussion
B
12:00PM -2:20PM
T
1046 Literatures, Cultures, & Ling
Gaedtke, A
Part of Term:
1
Date Range:
01/21/25-05/07/25
Section Info:
SP25 - ENGL 563 - Seminar on Themes and Movements - The Space of Possible Minds--Neurodiversity, Disability, and Narrative - Andrew Gaedtke - Many recent works of fiction and memoir attempt to represent the lived experiences of neurological difference, disability, or mental illness. Some of these works suggest that discursive self-representation performs vital functions such as the construction, maintenance, or repair of subjectivity. However, some theorists have raised interesting challenges to this assumption. This seminar will ask in what ways categories such as “subject,” or “personhood,” are underwritten by an ability to give an account of oneself, and what might count as such an “account.” We will examine recent representations of autism, schizophrenia, depression, and brain trauma in light of work in medical humanities, disability studies, psychiatry, and philosophy of mind. We will also ask how evolving notions of “brainhood” and the “cerebral subject” might be implicated in assumptions about cognitive and affective difference. How might we adopt a critical view of the cultural work that discourses of the brain often perform? Are more expanded frameworks necessary in order to address these issues? What roles can the study of language and literature play in these debates? Readings will likely include works by Nicola Barker, A.K. Benjamin, Yaa Gyasi, Siri Hustvedt, Mark Haddon, Tito Mukhopadhyay, Nikolas Rose and Joelle Abi-Rached, Fernando Vidal and Francisco Ortega, Michael Bérubé, Melanie Yergeau, and others.
Restriction(s):
Restricted to Graduate - Urbana-Champaign.
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