COML0103 - Doctors' Notes

Internist. Surgeon. Essayist. Poet. When we go to the doctor, we hope to meet someone whose medical expertise will allow them to remain objective as they assess our symptoms, and, like a good detective, get to the bottom of things quickly and efficiently. What we may not expect is that the person wearing the white coat is also a staff writer for The New Yorker. In this course students will explore critical and creative writing by physicians deeply interested in reflecting on the medical encounter alongside intersectional and multi-ethnic narratives of illness and disability. Together, we will ask: what role does the “literary” play in medicine? How do representations of health and healing differ or change as we consider genres such as fiction writing, film, graphic novels, and autobiography from U.S., Caribbean, and Latin American perspectives? Reading these unconventional “doctors’ notes” alongside patients’ writing about their lived experiences of health and healing, we will reflect on how the turn to narrative reveals new facets of the doctor-patient relationship not contained by the traditional genres of medicine.