This course explores representations of the impact of structural racism on health and health outcomes. In this endeavor, this course examines historical issues and theories, emphasizes critical analysis and the application of knowledge, and asks critical questions about authors’ decisions to depict illness and health in specific ways. Scholarly readings in the areas of narrative and critical race theory will not only illuminate the relationship between social conditions and health outcomes but also provide the necessary insights and concepts to articulate how authors and directors represent health risks and outcomes in cultural contexts. Written and visual texts will provide a context for reflecting on specific personal and cultural experiences with structural racism and the narrative strategies that authors employ to depict the effects of structural racism on African American bodies.
TBD
TBA
Narrative medicine, its practice and scholarship, is necessarily concerned with issues of trauma, body, memory, voice, and inter-subjectivity. However, to grapple with these issues, we must locate them in their social, cultural, political, and historical contexts. Narrative understanding helps unpack the complex power relations between North and South, state and worker, disabled body and able body, bread-earner and child-bearer, as well as self and the other (or, even,
selves
and
others
). If disease, violence, terror, war, poverty, and oppression manifest themselves narratively, then resistance, justice, healing, activism, and collectivity can equally be products of a narrative-based approach to ourselves and the world. This course explores the connections between narrative, health, and social justice. In doing so, it broadens the mandate of narrative medicine, challenging each of us to bring a critical, self-reflective eye to our scholarship, teaching, practice, and organizing. How are the stories we tell, and are told, manifestations of social injustice? How can we transform such stories into narratives of justice, health, and change?
TBA
Narrative Medicine Independent Study may be taken for one to four points (credits) depending on the work involved as determined with the advisor. Students may propose an Independent Study topic based on their past experience and future professional or academic goals, providing the opportunity for in-depth investigation of a particular topic of interest. Examples include: curriculum, program design, or program evaluation projects; creative projects; publishable articles, etc. Independent Study is not required for completion of the program.