English 207MG - Sci Writing:Imagining Illness

An exploration of the ways writers from a range of time periods and cultures represent--directly or metaphorically--illness and disease, diagnosis and treatment, suffering and healing. The course considers, as do growing numbers of medical educators and health professionals, the relations between interpretative skills and clinical practice, especially in attending to the stories both patients and texts try to tell. Readings will be selected from works by Berger, Edson, Fadiman, Grealy, Kafka, Lahiri, Lessing, Mann, McEwan, O'Neill, Saramago, Sontag, Sophocles, Williams, and Woolf.