Health, Justice and Literature

Catalog description

Our health affects every aspect of our lived experience; health care is shaped by access or denial--access to equity, dignity, and justice, or denial of them. Strengthening our narrative capacities can help us articulate the relationship between equity, dignity, justice, and health care as a holistic practice encompassing health, illness, healing, suffering, and death. This course begins from the premise that, on one hand, what medicine lacks--in singularity, empathy, humility--can, in part, be addressed by literary studies, and, on the other hand, medicine and health care can help literary scholars make their skills meet the social needs of the world around us. By integrating literature and medicine, we can create a world that is more equitable, dignified, and just. P: Critical Issues in Human Inquiry.