GU4396: Vulnerability, Illness and Literature | R. Goyal

Comparative Literature and Society
Undergraduate and Graduate Seminar
Tu 10:10AM-12PM

Social vulnerability. Climate Vulnerability. Vulnerable Populations. The list goes on. While vulnerability has become a key term in sociology, public health, climate sciences and disaster management, its roots are older. Derived from the Latin word for wound ("vulnus"), vulnerability refers to the predisposition or propensity to be harmed. It is a constitutive feature of embodied life. But vulnerability is also the precondition for intimacy and ethical life. Because we are vulnerable and permeable, we are by nature entangled with other lives and other substances. Vulnerability enables connections, understanding and relationality.

The infrastructures and institutions that we have built (physical or digital) are vulnerable to incipient failures and bad actors; the environments that we inhabit (the climate, the land, the oceans) are exposed to vulnerabilities often of our own design. This course will examine the ways that vulnerability works to connect bodies, persons and structures. It will explore the contradictions opened up by individual protagonists, biological processes and infrastructural deformations. 

Link to Vergil
Note: only courses offered during the two previous semesters have active Vergil links. 

Please note: The Center does not administer the courses listed and is not responsible for any changes in the content. For more information, please check the course directory or reach out directly to the instructor.