Literature and Health Humanities

Catalog description

Health and medicine are perennial themes in literature and popular culture: consider the popularity of memoirs about illness or disability, horror films about contagion, poems about mortality, and television shows that portray doctors as all-seeing disease-sleuths. By reading and analyzing texts across genres, students in this course will formulate answers to questions including: How does literature shape our experience of being ill, or our attitudes toward people who are? How do they overturn or reinforce stereotypes about illness, disability, or health? How might literature shape the practice of healthcare, or help us articulate its strengths and failures? While topics and texts covered will vary by semester, they may include topics like illness memoirs, pandemic fiction, and science fiction. Offered as BETH 335 , BETH 435 , ENGL 335 , and ENGL 435 . Counts as a Moral & Ethical Reasoning course.