Humanities: Literature and Medicine, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

How does literary language depict the experience of physical suffering? Can a poem or a novel palliate pain, illness, even the possibility of death? From darkly comic narratives of black plague and accounts of early modern melancholy to twentieth century critiques of the mental institution and depictions of the AIDS crisis, this course examines literature centered on medical practices from the early modern period through the twentieth century. Why have medical practices changed, and how do writers address their political, social, and ideological implications? Readings will include a broad range of genres, including poetry (Coleridge, Whitman), fiction (McEwan, Chekhov, Gilman, Kafka), theater (Kushner), nonfiction prose (Defoe, Woolf), and critical theory (Scarry, Canguilhem, Sontag). This six-part course examines the potential for literature to bridge the gap between the empirical and humanistic approaches to medicine to heighten our sensitivity to personal issues of disease, pain and suffering, and, ultimately, death. Note that this course is enrichment only; i.e. it cannot be taken for credit. This information has been collected for the Post-Discipline Online Syllabus Database. The database explores the use of literature by schools of professional education in North America. It forms part of a larger project titled Post-Discipline: Literature, Professionalism, and the Crisis of the Humanities, led by Dr Merve Emre with the assistance of Dr Hayley G. Toth. You can find more information about the project at https://postdiscipline.english.ox.ac.uk/. Data was collected and accurate in 2021/22.