English 189-2 - Spring, 2011

Seminar in Literary Studies

Topic: Literature & Medicine

Class Information

Instructor: Diehl, Joanne Feit
Time: TR 12:10-1:30
Location: 156 Voorhies

Description

While apparently two discrete fields, literature and medicine inform each other in
significant ways. Medical narratives by fiction writers, memoirs by both doctors and patients, anthropological comparisons of medical practice in different cultures-- all, in their various ways, bridge these disciplines. The latest subject to emerge from this pair is “narrative medicine,” which investigates
the ways that literary skills can contribute to current medical care. In this seminar, we will read
a wide range of works that span the terrain of literary and medical issues. Short stories by Leo Tolstoy, Flannery O’Connor, Raymond Carver, and Lorrie Moore will be joined by autobiographical
accounts of madness, two doctors’ memoirs of several of their most revealing cases, a theory of medical
narrative as detective story, and poems by Sylvia Plath and Raphael Campo. Together these readings and others will encourage a broad view of the literary influences on and manifestations in medicine to enrich our appreciation of what literarynarration offers medical practice.

Grading

2 short papers
1 final paper (8-10 pp)
All seminar members are required to submit in writing for each class2 questions based upon that day’s assignment; these questions will initiate class discussion. Since this is a seminar, its success will depend upon all individuals’ active participation.

Texts

Honoring the Stories of Others (Oxford, 2006) , Charon, Rita
, A Literary Anthology , edited by Robert Coles and Randy Testa (The New Press of New York, 2002), Coles, Robert
The Yellow Wallpaper, Gilman, Charlotte Perkins
The Measure of Our Days, Groopman, Jerome
An Unquiet Mind, Jamison, Kay Redfield
The Man Who Mistook his Wife for A Hat, Sacks, Oliver
The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness, (Hyperion, 2007), Saks, Elyn
The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Tolstoy, Leo
Doctor Stories, Williams, William Carlos
Hand-Outs to be given on the basis of student interests