The fragility of the body and its sturdy capacities for repair and reproduction comprise the mutual concerns of literature, medicine, and ethics. We will read works of imaginative literature and autobiographical narratives about the experience of illness. We will consider the micro-ethics entailed in individual encounters with illness written by or about medical clinicians (such as William Carlos Williams, Richard Selzer, Oliver Sacks, and Hemingway), patients (perhaps Virginia Woolf, Andre Dubus, Charlotte P. Gilman, William Styron, Gilda Radner, and Tolstoy), and caregivers (possibly Rick Moody and Lorrie Moore). We will also attend to the broader ethical issues of health and society represented by such literary works as Susan Sontag's "The Way We Live Now" (about AIDS), Toni Morrison's Sula (about healing in a community without doctors), Don DeLillo's White Noise (about environmental pollutions), and Anne Fadiman's The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (about medicine's responsibility to understand cultural difference). We'll also briefly survey recent theories of relations between the body, language, and ethics selected from writings by Scarry, Frank, Taylor, and Nussbaum. Through these diverse readings we will deliberate about such issues as euthanasia, patients' rights, reproduction, relief of pain, disability, the environment, responsibility for illness and for care of the ill, compassion, charity, justice, deception.

Most of our class meetings will be organized around discussions of weekly readings and the short response or position papers (1 or 2 pages) that you compose. You'll also write one short essay (3-5 pages), develop a project based on an issue you select (about 10 pages), and give a brief oral report about your project.