FYS 67 Medicine and Narrative
At their heart, both medicine and narrative storytelling are devoted to understanding and bettering the human condition. Both fields seek to comprehend problems in their full complexity and imagine solutions that can be communicated to readers and scholars, in the case of literature, and patients and practitioners in medicine. Indeed, the practice of medicine has been influenced by the humanities in surprising ways. For example, A.J. Cronin’s 1937 novel The Citadel played an important role in the creation of Britain’s National Health Service and contemporary television medical dramas, from E.R. to The Pitt, continue to shine a spotlight on healthcare in the United States. Over the course of the semester, we will read books such as Janice Nimura’s The Doctors Blackwell, Oliver Sacks’ The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, A.J Cronin’s The Citadel, Adam Kay’s This is Going to Hurt, and others, as we explore the rich connections between medicine and narrative.
Open only to first-year frosh.