Kingdom of the Well/Kingdom of the Sick: Approaches to Literature, Power, and the Health Humanities

Catalog description

What does it mean to be healthy? Susan Sontag begins her essay Illness as Metaphor with the idea that Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place. Sontags canonical work highlights not just metaphor and the role that literary narratives play in our imagination of health - but also the spatiotemporal and political dimensions to the stories we tell ourselves about health, sickness, and disability. Through novels, poems, stories and essays, we will ask what narratives frame our ideas of illness and wellness.