Medical Narratives: Compelling Stories from Antiquity to Grey’s Anatomy

This course will be part of the SHASS "Global Health and Medical Humanities" initiative. Through readings of classical, medieval, and contemporary texts, and the study of film, drama and television, students will acquire a sophisticated historical and cultural understanding of the metaphors surrounding illness and disease and their impact in the real world. Students will actively engage with practitioners of both medicine and its narration. They will be able to situate these medical narratives within broader international debates about treatment, standards of care and the ethics of medical decisions. By approaching these materials and debates from both patients' and physicians' perspectives, students will gain a prismatic vision of the field across time, place and position.