English and Comparative Literature
Undergraduate and Graduate Lecture
Tu Th 10:10-11:25AM
In this lecture course, we will consider how creative literature enriches our understanding of health and illness by exploring contemporary narratives about health and medicine in a global context. We will read literary writing by physicians in genres such as the short story, the case history, the satirical novel, and the medical memoir. As we move through shifting paradigms in healthcare, we will attend to how prose fiction can excavate and illustrate conflicts in the medical encounter—power struggles between doctors and patients, science and superstition, and cultural contexts—along with the challenges of war and trauma. We will consider, too, how medical fictions create generative space for motifs of alterity—physical disability, aging, cognitive differences, and gender fluidity—in contemporary global literature in English. As we read, we will attend to how the study of literature creates a series of critical methods that can be applied to problems across the health humanities.
Both literature and pre-med students are invited to enroll. This lecture will particularly suit students who are interested in literature post-1800, prose fiction, social justice, and the health humanities.
Link to Vergil
Note: only courses offered during the two previous semesters have active Vergil links.
