GSFS/ENAM 302
T/TH 11-12:15
Prof. Wells
Axinn 313
Fall 2017
Office Hours: Monday, 9-10; Tuesday, 1-2:45; Thursday, 12:30-1:30, and by appointment.
Unquiet Minds: Gender and Madness in Literature and Medicine
This class will explore the fascinating intersection of gender, literature, and medicine from the Greeks to the present day, focusing in particular on the early modern period. We will consider why and how such diseases as melancholy and hysteria became flashpoints for anxieties about gender and sexuality in this period, turning to both literary and medical narratives to illuminate the troubled interface between mind and body in the social construction of melancholic illness. Alongside literary texts that dramatize mental illness (such as Chrétien’s Yvain and Shakespeare’s Hamlet) we will read sections from Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholyand Jacques Ferrand’sTreatise on Lovesickness. The class will conclude with a consideration of contemporary texts that explore the experience of madness, including Kay Redfield Jamison’s memoir An Unquiet Mind and Susannah Cahalan’sBrain on Fire. In this final section we will also explore the work being done in the exciting emerging field of “narrative medicine,” which brings together literature and medicine in quite explicit and strategic ways.
Requirements:
You will write one longer research paper (12-15 pages) and one shorter paper (8-10 pages). You may choose, in consultation with me, to write a shorter research paper in conjunction with a personal narrative or creative piece for your final assignment. You will also contribute one short, informal blog entryper week to our class website. This will be a closed site, limited to members of the class. All readings, unless I ordered the book for you, will be posted on the site under “course resources.” Class participation is extremely important (as reflected in grade break-down below). I will encourage and expect you to do the readings carefully, and come to class willing to contribute ideas to our discussion. Blog postings will facilitate this, since you can rely on your written comments, and you will also have a chance to see what your classmates thought about the works before coming to class. You will also be responsible for periodically opening discussion about the reading, and spending 5 minutes pointing to things you found interesting or problematic in the reading. We will do several of these mini-presentations instead of one formal presentation.
This class will also integrate a simple, secular mindfulness practice, recognizing that we all have minds that are sometimes “unquiet.” This aspect of the class will be somewhat experimental, and responsive to the needs of the particular day.
By the same token, there will be a no-technologypolicy in this class. We have all seen how connected devices can distract students in class—and not just the students browsing or checking email—and this can be very disruptive. Since I very much do not want to be policing students’ use of devices in class, I have decided that use of these devices will not be permitted. If you believe you have an exceptional need in this area, please let me know, and we can discuss options.
Long paper: 35%
Short paper: 25%
Blog plus discussion: 25%
Mini-Presentations: 15%
Students who have Letters of Accommodation in this class are encouraged to contact me as early in the semester as possible to ensure that such accommodations are implemented in a timely fashion. For those without Letters of Accommodation, assistance is available to eligible students through Student Accessibility Services. Please contact Jodi Litchfield or Courtney Cioffredi, the ADA Coordinators, for more information: Courtney Cioffredi can be reached at or 802-443-2169 and Jodi Litchfield can be reached at or 802-443-5936. All discussions will remain confidential.
Schedule:
Divine Madness: Greeks and the Irrational
Sept. 12: Introduction
Sept. 14: Plato, The Phaedrus
Dodds, from The Greeks and The Irrational
Sept. 19: Plato, The Phaedrus
Sept. 21: Euripides, The Bacchae
Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution”
Sept. 26: Euripides, The Bacchae
Padel, “The Mainly Female Mind,” from In and out of Mind
Secularizing Madness: Hysteria and Black Melancholia
Sept. 28:Chrétien, Yvain
Foucault, Madness and Civilization, ch. 1
Felman, from Writing and Madness
Oct. 3: Chrétien, Yvain
Auerbach, from Mimesis
Oct. 5: Chrétien, Yvain
Aristotle, Problem 30
Oct. 10: Shakespeare, Hamlet
Burton, from Anatomy of Melancholy
Ficino, from De Vita Triplici
[Descartes, First Meditation]
Oct. 12: Shakespeare, Hamlet
Jacques Ferrand, Treatise on Lovesickness
Thomas Willis:from “The Practice of Physick”
Oct. 13First Paper Due
Oct. 17: Shakespeare, Hamlet
Schiesari, from The Gendering of Melancholia
Oct. 19: Shakespeare, Hamlet
Oct. 24: FALL BREAK
Oct. 26Shakespeare, Two Noble Kinsmen
Oct. 31:Shakespeare, Two Noble Kinsmen
Ferrand, “Female Love-melancholy”
Nov. 2:Shakespeare, Two Noble Kinsmen
Neely, from Distracted Subjects
Modern Maladies: Cultural Hysterias
Nov. 7:Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper”
Gilbert and Gubar, “Infection in the Sentence”
Nov. 9:Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper”
From Showalter, The Female Malady
Nov. 14:Woolf, Mrs Dalloway
From Showalter, Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Media
Nov. 16:Woolf, Mrs Dalloway
Extracts from Woolf, Moments of Being
Nov. 21:Woolf, Mrs Dalloway
Writing the Mind: Narrative and Medicine in Memoir
Nov. 23:THANKSGIVING
Nov. 28:Selections from Charon, Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness
Jamison, from Unquiet Minds
Nov. 30:Cahalan, Brain on Fire
Dec. 5:Cahalan, Brain on Fire
Dec. 7:Open session
Dec. 9Final Paper Due