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Engl 331A: Medicine and Literature ~ Summer 1, 2008

Dr. Agnes A. Cardoni

Office: Emmanuel 105 A

E-mail:

Introduction: A sentence from Marywood’s Mission Statement captures the essence of our work this semester. It reads: “Witnessing the efficacy of teaching and scholarship, Marywood educates students to live responsibly in a diverse and interdependent world.” During our semester together, we will continue our individual and collective journeys toward living the Marywood mission as we strive to become the best version of ourselves.

Course description: The relationships between literature and medicine are many and varied. This course will examine literary works involving issues of illness, treatment, and healing from the perspectives of medical practitioners, patients, caregivers, family, and others. This is a course for health-care persons, the sick and the well, designed to help health-care persons and others develop social support networks through reading, to enhance the pleasure of reading and to avoid burnout on the job.

Specific goals for this course:

  • Broaden students' perspectives by exposure to literature concerning the practice of the healing arts, the experiences of illness in individual patients, their caregivers, and their families and friends.
  • Encourage creativity, imagination critical thinking and a continually inquiring, self-educating mind.
  • Expand awareness of the many dimensions of reading as an activity whose benefits go far beyond the conveyance of mere information.
  • Increase social support among health care professionals through discussion and the sharing of stories.
  • Develop ability in students to describe and interpret in discussion and in journal writing and essay writing what they observe and feel about the readings.
  • Provide opportunities for students to establish their own "Book Groups" or "Reading Circles" as sites for renewal and support and pleasure that will enhance their professional and personal lives.

Texts:

Coles, Robert and Randy Testa. A Life In Medicine: A Literary Anthology. NY: The New

Press, 2002.

Edson, Margaret. Wit: A Play.

Lam, Vincent.Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures. Western Books, 2007.

Olsen, Tillie and Leo Tolstoy. The Riddle of Life and Death: “Tell Me a Riddle” and “The Death of Ivan Illych.” Boston: The Feminist Press.

Trudel, Sylvain. Mercury Under My Tongue.

Williams, William Carlos. The Doctor Stories.New Directions.

Classroom procedures:

The instructor will assume that the students will have carefully read the assigned literature and responded as instructed in their reading journals, before the class session. The format for class may vary from meeting to meeting, but may include lecture, discussion, film, , in-class writing, sharing of writing, short oral presentations, and collaborative work.

Grades will be based on:

Reading journaland/or homework 30%

Take-homemid-term exam 20%

Active and informed class participation 15%

One short paper with documentation 20%

Final examination 15%

Assessment scales

For homework, rough drafts, quizzes:

+ = A (96)

 = B (87)

-- = C (76)

= (double minus) = 70

½ = 50

0 = 0

For essays and other major materials:

98-100 = A+

95-97 = A

92-94 = A-

89-91 = B+

85-88 = B

82-84 = B-

78-81 = C+

75-77 = C

73-74 = C-

70-72 = D+

65-69 = D

60-64 = D-

55-59 = F

Assignments are due at the beginning of class, unless otherwise indicated. I do not accept late homework. E-mailing me homework before class on a day you cannot be in class is acceptable.

Late essays will be downgraded one grade per day or fraction thereof.

Attendance is required. There are no "cuts." This course meets only once a week. More than two absences, without "official" paperwork,” may result in the lowering of your final grade. If and when you are absent beyond 3 absences and without official documentation, you can expect to fail the course.

Reading Journals

I will collect your journal assignments at random; therefore, you need to have your notes ready for every class.

Keep notes on LOOSELEAF NOTEBOOK PAPER. That way, you can insert the parts you will have submitted to me in chronological order more easily when they are returned.

I have a procedure for taking notes that I expect you to follow. I refer to it as “dialectical notes,” “double-entry notes,” or “double-entry journal” (dej). You must set your notes up in the format I give you if you expect full credit for them.

Reading Journal Format: (see sample for complete example and explanation) handwritten and legible

Author, “Title” date read

Jones, “Truth Returns” 9-12-04

Page # Notes on the text Responses from you

42 Mary enters, says John died reminds me of ending of

Sep. Peace—so sad . . .

Format for pages following:

Auth/title 2, 3, etc

Jones 2

Page # text you

42-3 planning service w/ Kenyon poem useful if ever I need to plan

a funeral again

USE ONLY FRONT SIDES OF EACH SHEET OF PAPER
Format for all other out-of-class assignments: Typed, double-spaced, Times New Roman or Arial, 12-pt font, 1-inch margins

HEADER:

John Doe

English 331A

Dr. Cardoni

Mid-term exam (or whatever it is)

13 June 2008 (DATE SUBMITTED)

HEADER FOR SUBSEQUENT PAGES:

Doe 2

Academic Honesty/ Plagiarism

Students assume the responsibility for providing original work in their courses without plagiarizing. According to the sixth edition of the Little, Brown Handbook, plagiarism "is the presentation of someone else's ideas or words as your own" (545). Similarly, the fifth edition of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers states, "to use another person's ideas or expressions in your writing without acknowledging the source is to plagiarize . . . A writer who fails to give appropriate acknowledgment when repeating another's wording or particularly apt term, paraphrasing another's argument, or presenting another's line of thinking is guilty of plagiarism" (30).

Academic writing assignments that require the use of outside sources generally are not intended to teach students to assemble a collection of ideas and quotes, but rather to synthesize the ideas they find elsewhere in order to construct new knowledge for themselves.

Deliberate plagiarism Submitting the work of another person or submitting a paper purchased from another person or agency is a clear case of intentional plagiarism for which students will be subject to the severest penalties.

Penalties for plagiarism may range from failure for the particular assignment to failure for the course.

Americans with Disabilities Act: The instructor will accommodate students with disabilities in accordance with school policies and in compliance with all applicable laws.

"Reading has always been my home, my sustenance, my great invincible companion. 'Book love,' Trollope called it. 'It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live.' Yet of all the many things in which we recognize some universal comfort--God, sex, food, family, friends--reading seems to be the one in which the comfort is most undersung, at least publicly, although it was really all I thought of, or felt, when I was eating up book after book, running away from home while sitting in [a] chair, traveling around the world and yet never leaving the room. I did not read from a sense of superiority, or advancement, or even learning. I read because I loved it more than any other activity on earth."

-- Anna Quindlen, in How Reading Changed My Life.