ENGL 200: Introduction to Health Humanities (XC)

Course Description

This course is an introduction to the interdisciplinary field of Health Humanities. In ENGLISH 200, we will take up key questions and debates about the ways in which the humanities and social sciences intersect with healthcare, health, and well-being. Since we are all consumers of health, we can all benefit from focused inquiry into issues related to illness, disability, ageing, suffering, and care, and thus the topics examined in this course will be of urgent interest to students from across the disciplines, and the critical approaches we take will enable students to engage more knowledgeably with health, whether as patients, practitioners, or critical citizens. Our course texts will be diverse – from essays and book chapters to stories to poems to visual and audio art to film – and through our engagement with these various texts, students will cultivate skills of close noticing, critical analysis and evaluation, comparison, and structured response. In combining works produced within a variety of fields across the arts, humanities, and social sciences, this course has as its goal to broaden the scope of the means by which we make sense of health and illness and to cultivate our awareness of perspectives, narratives, meanings, and approaches to the experience and practice of health.