English 125 - Representing Illness

Fall
2017
01
4.00
Anston Bosman
MW 02:00PM-03:20PM
Amherst College
ENGL-125-01-1718F
OCTA 200
abosman@amherst.edu

With a focus on the skills of close reading and analytical writing, we will look at the ways in which writers imagine illness, how they try to make meaning out of illness, and how they use illness to explore other aspects of experience.  This is not a course on the history of illness or the social construction of disease.  We will discuss not only what writers say about illness but also how they say it: with what language and in what form they speak the experience of bodily and mental suffering.  Readings may include drama by Sophocles, Molière and Margaret Edson; poetry by Donne and Mark Doty; fiction by José Saramago and Mark Haddon; and essays by Susan Sontag, Raphael Campo and Temple Grandin.


Preference given to first-year students.  Limited to 18 students.  Fall semester.  Professor Bosman.

Permission is required for interchange registration during all registration periods.