Medicine and Literature

Catalog description

Study illness stories in literary genres spanning the eighteenth through early twentieth centuries. Explore how culture constructs stories of sickness and how those stories shape our own experiences of health and wellbeing. Contrasting stories from distinct and sometimes opposing perspectives (e.g., experience gap between doctor and patient; different cultural notions of health; differences in gender, race, class and social status), learn how to listen and respond to various ways people tell their own illness stories.