Reading & Composition

The recent apparition of bibliotherapists—medical practitioners who prescribe books to their ailing patients—elicits an important question: what if literature as medicine were more than simply a metaphor? In this course, we will look to and beyond the possibility of literature as a “cure” by analyzing how an array of novels, memoirs, short stories, and photographs from widespread historical and linguistic traditions both construct their own knowledge about certain medical diagnoses and destabilize the presumed mastery of empirical scientific knowledge. By way of our readings, we might ask questions such as: who are the 19th C novel’s “ill” protagonists? What is the relationship between aesthetic form and the experience of mental illness? Between aesthetics and anesthetics? Do literary movements and genres like naturalism, or science fiction, draw their innovations from scientific ones and vice versa? And how might literature put pressure on prevailing medical discourses about gender, sexuality, national identity, and race?

As part and parcel of the University’s R&C requirements, this course is designed to help students develop their critical writing and reading skills. In other words, we will spend a significant amount of time, both in class and not, writing, rewriting, and engaging one another’s written work. We will practice formulating nuanced theses based on careful textual analysis, on conducting and incorporating secondary research, and on crafting intelligent and polished papers. (Put straightforwardly, this is a reading and writing intensive course!)