IGS/SCT 530Q Term 2
Studies in Intellectual Histories
Instructor: Jelena Jovicic
Illness, Culture and Self
Description:
Since the beginning of the 19th Century, an era that witnessed the birth of the modern clinic (according to Foucault, at least), advances in medical science and technology powerfully affected both our material world and our inner experience, including the image we have of ourselves and humanity. This course will explore the relationship between medicine, society and individual selves, while analyzing literature (short stories and excerpts from novels) as well as first person narratives of illness and suffering. We will focus on two main questions: What is it really like to experience serious illness, and even to face death? How is this kind of suffering perceived and accepted by society and its institutions? Particular consideration will be given to three fatal diseases which affected the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: tuberculosis, cancer and AIDS.
Course objectives:
This course will introduce students to:
a) the cultural theory of illness, while exploring the intersection
of literary, theoretical and ethical discourses about AIDS,
tuberculosis and cancer.
b) literary methodologies (poetics of genre; discourse analysis).
Evaluation:
2 Critical reviews (film/journal article) 30%
2 Presentations 40%
Final paper 30%
Weekly program:
Week 1: Introduction: Stories of Illness
Weeks 2 & 3: Medicine and culture
Georges Canguilhem. On the Normal and the Pathological. (Excerpts))
Foucault: The Birth of the Clinic: an Archaeology of Medical Perception. (Excerpts)
Weeks 4 & 5: Illness as Metaphor
Susan Sontag: Illness as Metaphor. (Excerpts)
Elaine Scarry: Body in Pain. The Making and Unmaking of the World. (Excerpts)
Weeks 6 & 7: Illness, gender and writing: On Tuberculosis
Catherine Pozzi: Diary (1893-1906).
Weeks 8 & 9: A Whole New Life: Cancer Chronicles
Ruth Picardie. Before I say goodbye.
Weeks 10, 11 & 12: The Modern Plague: AIDS
Hervé Guibert: Cytomegalovirus: a hospitalization diary.
Week 13: Conclusions.
Recommended readings:
Ariès, Philippe. The Hour of our Death. New York: Knopf, 1981.
Bates, Barbara. Bargaining for Life. A Social History of Tuberculosis, 1876-1938. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania Press, 1992.
Eaglestone, Robert. Ethical Criticism. Reading after Levinas. Edinburgh: Edinburgh U Press, 2001.
Fee, Elizabeth. AIDS. The Burdens of History. Berkeley: U of California Press, 1988.
Gill, Jo (ed). Modern Confessional Writing. New Critical Essays. London and New York: Routledge, 2006.
Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay in Abjection, trans. L.S. Roudiez. New York : Columbia U Press, 1982.
Loudon, Irvine (ed.). Western Medicine: An Illustrated History. Oxford: Oxford U Press, 2001.
Lupton, Deborah. Medicine as Culture. London: Sage Publications, 2003.
Proctor, Robert. Cancer Wars: How Politics Shapes What We Know and Don’t Know about Cancer. New York: BasicBooks, 1995.
Stewart, Mary Lynn. For Health and Beauty. Physical Culture for Frenchwomen 1880-1930s. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U Press, 2001.
Last reviewed 
1/4/2008 7:21:35 PM
