LIT 3438 Spring 2023 Kennedy

Courses in Literature and Medicine often study how literary texts address questions in medical ethics and public health. In Literature and Medicine: Diseases and Debates, students will read a selection of brief essays, fiction, poetry, and other texts from the 19th century alongside critical and historical work from today’s medical landscape, in order to understand the roots of contemporary medical debates and how they have changed over time. These controversies helped shape the landscape of medical ethics. We will compare, for example, how questions around anesthesia, patient privacy, or contagion play out “then and now.” This course builds skills in critical reading and writing, cultural practice, and ethics.

We’ll examine illness as metaphor; the art and science of medicine; the rise of medical realism, objectivity and authority; the roles of the physician, nurse, and patient; the meaning of patient privacy and consent; medical professionalism and alternative medicine; food adulteration, nutrition; disability rights; prosthetics and the integrity of the body; pain, anesthetics, and drug use; and the “good death.” The new “COVID edition” of the course revises and expands our discussion of epidemiology, sanitary reform, epidemics, and personal vs. public health.

We will focus on literary, cultural, and ethical analysis in a historical context. Students will complete one analytic and one personal (creative) essay response to the debates we study.

This course fulfills the Ethics and Humanities/Cultural Practice requirements in the Liberal Studies Curriculum and the “W” (State-Mandated Writing) credit. It will also help students prepare for the Critical Analysis and Reasoning Skill section of the MCAT.