English
3154: Literature, Medicine, and Culture
Spring
2008 CRN 12667
MWF
11:15-12:05, Derring 1090
Professor
Bernice Hausman
Description
Readings
Navigating the course website
Student Accommodation
Attendance
Assignments
Succeeding in this course
Schedule
Description:
This
course examines representations of health and illness in literature and medicine
as a cultural practice. Students will read pathography or writing about illness; literature
that includes images and themes concerning medicine, health, and illness; and
cultural analyses of public health campaigns and discourses about health and
illness in the media. Thus, Literature, Medicine, and Culture offers students
experience in working critically with literary texts and the cultural analysis
of social practices, long a part of cultural studies. The skills that students
learn in this course—identifying and understanding medicine and medical
practice as socially constituted, identifying ethical dilemmas in relation to
illness and treatment, articulating the linkages between culture and health—are
critical to informed citizenship. Reading responses, 3 papers, and 3 exams.
Readings:
Books have been ordered at the university bookstore and are also available at
Volume II and the Tech Bookstore.
Anne
Finger, Elegy for a Disease
Abraham Verghese, My Own Country
Anne Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
Virginia Woolf, On Being Ill
Anton Chekhov, The Major Plays (we are reading Ivanov)
The Icarus Project, Navigating the Space between Brilliance and
Madness
Online
or supplied by professor:
--Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Rappaccini's
Daughter" and "The
Birthmark"
--Bradley Lewis,"Listening to Chekhov: Narrative Approaches to Depression,"
Literature and Medicine 25.1 (Spring 2006): 46-71. Available through
e-journals link on library homepage
--Lorrie Moore, "People Like That Are the Only People Here: Canonical Babblings in Peed
Onk"
--Chitra Banerjee
Divakaruni, "What the Body Knows"
--stories by Mikhail
Bulgakov
--poetry by Sylvia
Plath
--U.S. Surgeon General's Pamphlet on AIDS (available for download on Blackboard);
see also C. Everett Koop papers online.
Recommended (for your own interest or if you want to work on a novel for the 3rd paper):
Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility (in preparation for seeing the film, if you'd like)
Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain (tuberculosis)
George Eliot, Middlemarch (this is a very long book, but well worth the effort)
Sue Miller, Family Pictures (about a family in which a son has autism)
Heidi Julevitz, The Uses of Enchantment (psychoanalysis and revision of the Dora story)
Lucy Grealy, Autobiography of a Face (not fiction, but well worth it)
Ann Patchet, The Magician's Assistant (AIDS, in part, but also recovery from grief)
Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (illness and subjectivity)
Margaret Atwood, Surfacing and The Robber Bride (actually, anything by Atwood)
J. M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians (lots here about the body and colonialism)
Markus Zusak, The Book Thief (not really about medicine or health, but does deal with issues of healing and writing)
and of course much, much more . . .
How to navigate this website:
Below on this page you will find the assignments and reading schedule for this course, as well as information about attendance . Under assignments, you will see how much each assignment is worth as a percentage of your final grade. The reading schedule includes the topics for discussioin, exam dates, and due dates for papers and presentations, as well as information about what to read when.
Under General Course Info (another web page) you will find links to Prof. Hausman's teaching pages, including information about how to read for her classes, expectations for written work, feminist pedagogy, undergraduate academic policies (see esp. pages on plagiarism) and the honor code, etc. It is your responsibility as a student in Prof. Hausman's class to be familiar with these guidelines and expectations.
Statement on student accommodation:
Students who have a disability or other condition that requires accommodation should discuss the issue with Prof. Hausman early in the semester. Students need not disclose their condition with the professor, merely provide her with documentation from the Dean of Students Office concerning the necessary accommodation. Students may make an appointment or come to Prof. Hausman's office hours (posted on contact info page). All conversations between individual students and the professor will remain confidential.
Issues that come up midsemester concerning attendance, family emergencies, etc., should be vetted through the Dean of Students Office as well. Please do not send me emails concerning family emergencies unless you also intend to discuss the matter with the Dean of Students and get an official note sent to all of your teachers. My attendance policy, below, discusses other particulars of my expectation of your attendance.
No absences are excused, but students have three allocated cuts that are "free"--use them wisely! More than three absences will affect your grade; each absence over three (one full week of class) will cause a diminishment in your grade. If there are ongoing issues that will affect your ability to attend this class, please see Professor Hausman early in the semester.
Assignments and Methods
of evaluation:
Informal writing--15 pts. On Monday of each
week I will post a question in a new discussion board on Blackboard. By
Friday at 5pm, students will each post a response to the original question or a response to another student's entry. Responses should be paragraphs at least 4-5 sentences in length, enough for you to develop an idea. Think about your response as a "page" of writing.
Each response is worth 1 point.
Paper #1--10 pts. Write
a narrative of an encounter with illness or medicine, either your own or someone
else's. Use the readings for class as a guide to style and substance. Think
about what you want to convey to your reader about the experience either of
illness or of the encounter with medical professionals. 4 pps.
Paper #2--15 pts. Write a critical analysis of the experience conveyed in paper #1. Use the analytical tools developed through readings and class discussion to consider how the experience was constructed in particular cultural circumstances. What did the experience mean and how was it connected to broader cultural or representational concerns? 4 pps.
Paper #3--15 pts. The final paper of this class can be either (1) a cultural or rhetorical analysis of a medical practice, tradition, or disease or (2) an analysis of a literary work dealing with a medical or health-related topic. Students must hand in at least one prior draft of the paper, including editing marks and evidence of revision, with the final copy. 4-6 pps.
Three exams, each worth 15 points.
Success in this course depends upon your diligent attention to course requirements, which are reading for class, participating in the discussion board weekly, attendance, participation in class discussion, studying for exams, and writing papers. Keeping abreast of the readings is very important, because you will not be quizzed on these weekly but you will be responsible for all readings and will be tested on these in the exams. Do not fall behind in the readings! Students who do well in Professor Hausman's classes keep up with their weekly work and begin their papers with enough time to write multiple drafts.
[Readings are identified by the author's last name, so check the list of readings above. Books should be completed on the day that we begin to discuss them.]
Unit 1: Personal narrative/Narrative medicine
Jan. 14, 16, 18: Introductions and lectures on medical humanities and narrative medicine. Check out New Literary History vol. 38, issue 3, the "Biocultures Manifesto" on Project Muse (available through electronic journals on the library homepage). Also check out the Narrative Medicine website. [Start reading Verghese, My Own Country]
Jan. 23, 25: Verghese, My Own Country [Start reading Finger, Elegy for a Disease]
Jan. 28, 30, Feb. 1: My Own Country [Keep reading Elegy for a Disease]; viewing in class, Polio documentary.
Feb. 4, 6, 8: Finger, Elegy for a Disease
Feb. 11: Paper #1; Disability rights and disability studies discussion
Feb. 13, 15: The Icarus Project, Navigating the Space between Brilliance and Madness. Check out the Icarus Project web pages. http://theicarusproject.net/.
Feb. 18: Exam #1
Unit 2: Literature
Feb. 20: Chekhov, Ivanov
Feb. 22: Bradley Lewis,"Listening to Chekhov: Narrative Approaches to Depression," Literature and Medicine 25.1 (Spring 2006): 46-71. Available through e-journals link on library homepage
Feb. 25: Lewis and Ivanov continued.
Feb. 27, 29: Woolf, On Being Ill
Spring Break
Mar. 10: Hawthorne "The Birthmark" and "Rappaccini's Daughter"
Mar. 12: "People Like That Are the Only People Here: Canonical Babblings in Peed Onk" (Lorrie Moore) [Handout]
Mar. 14: "What the Body Knows" (Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni). [Handout]
Mar. 17: Visiting scholar, Laura Behling, "The Artificial Man" by Katherine Winger Harris and "Another Country" by Ernest Heminway
March 17, optional lecture, 4:15pm in Holden Auditorium (190), by Laura Behling. EXTRA CREDIT: write a 1-2 page write-up of the lecture, including a summary of her argument and evidence and a response to her discussion. DUE MARCH 21. (possible total of 3 extra credit points)
Mar. 19, 21: Viewing, Sense and Sensibility.
Mar. 24: Paper #2; viewing, Sense and Sensibility.
Mar. 26: Discussion of Sense and Sensibility
Mar. 28: Exam #2
Unit 3: Culture and Rhetoric
Mar. 31: Revisiting AIDS timeline and discussion of AIDS in America. Read the U. S. Surgeon General's pamphlet on AIDS (available on Blackboard). [Start reading Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down]
Apr. 2: AIDS materials--TASO songs; continued discussion of U.S. Surgeon General's AIDS pamphlet [Keep reading Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down]
Apr. 4: AIDS education, from TASO and the United States. [Keep reading The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down]
Apr. 7, 9: "Beat It" viewing and discussion. [Keep reading The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down]
Apr. 11: Medical public service announcements and the media: reading medical rhetoric. (Materials provided by professor.)
Apr. 14, 18: Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down [no class Apr. 16]
Apr. 21, 23: Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
Apr. 25: Paper #3
Apr. 28, 30: Wrap-up and Review. Self-evaluation due Apr. 30.
May 5: 2:05-4:05pm, Exam #3