Bodies, Illnesses and Philosophy: Health Humanities in the Francophone World - Taught in English.
What can literature teach us about our relationship to health, illness, and the management of epidemics? How should we contemplate recovery and resilience when our experience of disease impacts the way we define our own bodies? Drawing on European philosophies of medicine, “Bodies, Illnesses, and Philosophy” investigates the narrative, aesthetic dimensions and ethical stakes presented by various depictions of illness in 20th and 21st century French and Francophone literature across different artistic genres including autofiction, essays, novels, graphic novels, films and documentaries. The seminar examines how medicine interacts with and redefines notions of class, race, gender, and disability, and how science influences social and political discourses on bodies.
Since the 1990s, narrative medicine has encouraged patients to write their own stories in order to put their narratives back at the center of medical care through an active collaboration that enhances empathetic relations between healthcare professionals and patients. While medical humanities focus on the interdisciplinary training of caregivers and their working conditions, health humanities aim to consider public health issues in a cross-media way by studying how ethical issues are expressed and challenged in art and literature. In this seminar, we will be in dialogue with narrative medicine to understand how suffering bodies were represented historically across different media. We will study illnesses as lived experiences that transform how we think of the body in social, political and cultural contexts. We will also investigate the praxis of “care” and social justice in current public health measures.
This graduate seminar includes French contemporary philosophies of the body, discussions on the challenges of public health in the Francophone world, as well as disability studies. Units include but are not limited to: physical ailments, epidemics, the circulation of drugs and medicine, French legacies of hysteria and psychiatric internment, and narratives of neurodivergence. A companion lecture series to this seminar comprises sessions on disability in contemporary media, disability, sexuality and race in early modern France, and dance and pandemics. A pedagogy unit will also allow students to develop teaching activities on the seminar’s themes in their respective disciplines.
Number of Credits
3
Kaliane Ung