ENG-170 Narrative and Medicine
This course will provide an introduction to the literature written about medicine and medical research. We will study the ways in which narrative complexly represents illness, disability, doctor-patient relationships, health insurance, and other medical issues, including the end of life. The nonfiction books, short stories, and poems we read this semester are written from the viewpoints of patients, doctors, researchers, and literary critics, and provide us with nuanced, often ethically-challenging examples of how literary techniques-plot, character, point of view, image and metaphor-work to reveal the subjective experiences of diagnosis, treatment, healing, and paying in the world of medicine, and how these experiences ultimately ask questions about what makes life and the body worth valuing. Our readings will explore the intersections between storytelling and science in an effort to better understand the relationship between self and society.