Narrative,Literature and Medicine
MMHU6910
This unit of study explores the connections between literature, narrative and medicine. From writings by Leo Tolstoy, Franz Kafka, and Virginia Woolf, to contemporary texts by Vincent Lam and Jean-Dominique Bauby, students will encounter and analyse a wide range of literary and non-literary narratives concerned with illness, embodiment and healing. The unit will provide a space for informal discussion and reflection on the texts we encounter, while also introducing students to influential theories of narrative and modes of cultural, literary and linguistic analysis that can further enrich our understandings of these texts. Students are encouraged to probe the limits (the 'what', 'how', and 'who') of knowledge issuing from literary and other modes of narrating health. Topics or themes covered during the course include: narrative theory (narratology); narrative competence; literary/cultural representations of health practitioners; rhetoric (semiotics) of health; literary/cultural constructions of disability and femininity; narrative ethics; language and embodiment; medico-literary ëgenres' (e.g. autopathography and the medical [anti]bildungsroman); narrating death and dying; and the limits of narrative.
Unit of study details
Unit of study level: Postgraduate
Credit points: 6
Commencing semesters: 2
Further unit of study information
Unit of study handbook: MMHU6910
Costs and scholarships information: Costs and Scholarships
Final dates to withdraw from units of study: Census Dates
Available for study abroad and exchange: No