CONN 148 | Medical Narratives

Medical Narratives explores how the experience of health, illness, and medicine is shaped by language into multiple acts of storytelling, including the complex narrative interactions between patients and health care workers, health and illness, body and mind. The course will examine accounts of how cultural and individual lived experiences provide different conceptions of health and healing and illness and disease, and what those narratives reveal about medical knowledge and authority, empathy and belief, metaphor and fact. Readings and other materials for Medical Narratives will include variety of genres, including fiction, poetry, memoir, and drama, essays and other non-fiction articles and popular medical accounts, and class materials may include a range of other media, such as podcasts, film, video, and social media.