ENGL 55.27 Introduction to Literature and Medicine
This course will introduce you to the many ways that medicine and literature shape each other, both historically and in our present. In class, we will discuss classic works of history and fiction that are considered foundational in how Western culture imagines and interprets disease. Our reading list, however, will be centered on a new canon of literature and medicine, beginning, as we must, with intersectional and social justice concerns: chiefly how race, class, gender, sexuality, and disability determine health outcomes and our broader understanding of health and disease in a global context.