LLC 212 - Books Without Borders: Reading the Body: Medical Literature & the Female Body

Doctors (who have, historically, been mostly men) and healers (who have, also historically, often been women) have played a special –but by no means all-knowing—role in explaining how the body functions. Medical texts offer not only snapshots of scientific understandings specific to a time and place, but also a glimpse at the creative processes that inform the healers.

Literary texts can also reveal the science and technology of their contexts, from a range of times and places. More important, literature introduces an element of ambiguity that complements the apparent certainty of scientific evidence and invites a reader to engage with the multifaceted and often messy reality of the human –and in particular, the female– condition.

This course will present texts from a variety of historical, cultural, and linguistic sources, in English translation, and will explore evolving notions of the body, distinctive gender- and culture-based impressions of illness and pain, and the representation of specific conditions and diseases. The practice of medicine –which may or may not be among the goals of students in the class—will provide a framework for the texts we read and the projects we do. All texts taught in English.