ENG1660H: Writing about Illness and Medicine

Abstract

In this course, we will be exploring the imperatives and the challenges of writing about illness: first as readers, and then—our ultimate focus—as writers. Like other traumas, illness calls out to language and text-making—and, at the same time, pushes against the limits of language, narrative, and genre.¶ Susan Sontag’s famous distinction between the “kingdom of the well” and the “kingdom of the sick” frames the cognitive distance be-tween the experience of illness and the taken-for-granted realities of daily life. Language remains a precious resource for crossing that divide, for deepening our understanding of what it means to be ill, and even for improving medicine’s ability to care for patients.¶ This course fulfills the Writing requirement for the English major, and can be counted to-ward the Writing minor.