Office Hours

Monday and Wednesday 1 to 3 p.m., Thursday 3 to 5 p.m. and by appointment if you have class or work conflicts

Required Texts

 Anne Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

Tony Kushner, Angels in America, parts 1 and 2

Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors

Selected texts to be provided via handouts or e-reserve, accessible from the library’s homepage

Andrea Lunsford, The Everyday Writer

Course Description

 Illness in America has been and continues to be constructed through the lens of its contemporary cultural currents: in Puritan texts illness is viewed as punishment while the nineteenth century invoked the reality and metaphor of contagion.  In the twentieth century, illness is considered to be an affliction of an individual, and then later, an indictment of society and a consequence of lifestyle.  Literary narratives--fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, and essay--will be our primary focus for examining illness, and will range from early American texts to Edgar Allan Poe short stories to Angels in America; essays such as Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor, medical articles, religious and historical treatises, news reports, and popular media case studies will complement the literature.  All of these diverse texts will allow us to hear voices inside and outside of medicine as we contemplate the narratives of illness.

Course Goals

 All first-term seminars share several goals for the beginning of your college liberal arts education:

·  To cultivate thoughtful discussion

·  To increase your fluency and sophistication in writing

·  To develop habits of thinking critically about what you read, see, and hear

·  To reflect on the questions of value you encounter all around you

·  To form a variety of new relationships, including advising relationships

Date                            Schedule of Readings and Assignments                  Assignment Due Dates

 September 3                     Introduction to the course, advising issues

September 5                      Considering illness                                                                        Response 1

September 7                        Rosenberg, "Framing Disease"

                                    Epstein, "Defining Disease"

 "we shall be plagu'd indeed"

 September 10                        Wigglesworth, "God's Controversy with New England"

                                                Mather, from "Wonders of the Invisible World"                         Response 2

                                                Best, Neuhauser, and Slavin, "'Cotton Mather, you dog, dam you!...'"

September 12                        Contemporary Case Studies: Illness and Religion            R&R

September 14                        Interview Project Overview

 Illness as Contagion

 September 17                        Pernick, "Contagion and Culture"                                   

                                                Poe, "The Masque of Red Death"

September 19 (8 a.m.)            Writing Workshop: Library Workshop and Revising Writing

September 21                         Sontag, Illness as Metaphor, pp. 5-49                                     Revision Response 2

 The Nerve to Be Sick

 September 24                        Sontag, Illness as Metaphor, pp. 50-87

September 26                        Gilman, "The Yellow Wallpaper"                                                 Response 3

September 28                        No Class

 October 1                                    Gilman, "Why I Wrote 'The Yellow Wallpaper'"

                                                Hedges, "Scudder's Comment"

                                                Treichler, "Escaping the Sentence: Diagnosis and Discourse in 'The Yellow

                                                            Wallpaper'"           

                                                Smith-Rosenberg, "The Hysterical Woman: Sex Roles and Role Conflict in

                                                            Nineteenth-Century America"                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

October 3                                    Nobel Conference: No Class

October 5                                    Library                                                                                                Revision Response 3

 October 8                                    Dr. Jacquelyn Alvarez, Counseling Center

October 10                                    Dr. Jacquelyn Alvarez, Counseling Center

October 12                                    Contemporary Case Study: Mental Illnesses                        R&R

October 15                        Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, all of Part One Response 4

October 17 (8 a.m.)            Awakenings (film) Sacks,

October 19                        Sacks, The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, all of Part Four

October 22                                    Reading Break

October 24 (8 a.m.)              Sacks, The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, all of Parts Two and Three           

(October 25                                    Individual Appointments)

October 26                                    Individual Appointments           

 October 29                                    Interview Project Part 1 Discussion                                                Interview Proj. Part 1

October 31                                    No Class

November 2                        No Class

 November 5                        Contemporary Case Study: Illness and the Environment            R&R

November 7 (8 a.m.)            Safe (film)

November 9                        Career Center

                                                                                   “what I am is defined entirely by who I am”

 November 12                        Sontag, AIDS and Its Metaphors

November 14 (8 a.m.)            Writing Workshop: Drafting the Interview Project Long Essay

November 16                        Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

                                                “Author Bio” of Fadiman,  “Hmong Shamanism and Hmong Health Care

                                    Choices,” and “Building Bridges: Teaching about the Hmong in our Communities”

November 19                        Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down                         Response 5

November 21                        Enjoy your Thanksgiving break

November 23                        Enjoy your Thanksgiving break

November 26                        Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down                                   

November 28 (8 a.m.)            Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down           

November 30                         Kushner, Angels in America                                               

 December 3                        Kushner, Angels in America                                                                        Response 6

December 5 (8 a.m.)            Kushner, Angels in America

December 7                        Kushner, Angels in America

 Illness?

 December 10                        Morgellons Disease

December 12                         Writing Workshop: Editing the Draft of the Interview Project Long Essay

December 14                        Final thoughts           

 Monday, December 18            Final Draft of Interview Project Long Essay due by 5:30 p.m.

Course Policies and Requirements

 Please demonstrate respect for your class colleagues, your instructor, and yourself by observing the following requests and meeting the following expectations:

 Academic Integrity and Standards

 Gustavus Honor Code: "As a community of scholars, the faculty and students of Gustavus Adolphus College have formulated an academic honesty policy and honor code system, which is printed in the Academic Bulletin and in the Gustavus Guide. As a student at Gustavus Adolphus College I agree to uphold the honor code. This means that I will abide by the academic honesty policy, and abide by decisions of the joint student/faculty Honor Board."

 As part of the new honor system, the following code will be written in full and signed on every examination and graded paper: “On my honor, I pledge that I have not given, received, nor tolerated others’ use of unauthorized aid in completing this work.”

 In an academic community, a scholar’s ideas and written or spoken expression of them, their words in short, are that scholar’s property.  As such, to use another’s person’s words without their permission and without properly citing the original source is the grievous academic offense of plagiarism.  Therefore, any work you submit must be your own.  When you use someone else's words and/or ideas, you must give proper credit. If you plagiarize you will fail the course and the incident will be forwarded to the Office of the Dean of Faculty for further review.  Properly crediting one's sources is not difficult and you will find a good guide in how to do this in The Everyday Writer; we'll also spend time in class working on researching, documenting, and citing sources. If you have questions, consult the Writing Center or talk with me.

 Disability Services

 Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act (1990) work together to ensure ‘reasonable accommodation’ and non-discrimination for students with disabilities in higher education.  A student who has a physical, psychiatric/emotional, medical, learning, or attentional disability that may have an effect on the student’s ability to complete assigned course work should contact the Disability Services Coordinator in the Advising Center, who will review the concerns and decide with the student what accommodations are necessary. 

 Attendance and Participation

Attend class, every class meeting, every conference, every group-arranged meeting.

Participate thoughtfully--arrive on time with the day's reading and writing completed.

The majority of class time will be devoted to discussion of the assigned readings; please come to class   

prepared to participate, offer opinions, and ask questions. If you are absent more than four times over the semester, your final grade will be reduced by one-third for each successive absence.  You are responsible for the material on the day(s) you are absent; please make arrangements with classmates for the material.

 General Writing Assignment Guidelines

 Double-space and leave one-inch margins all around.  You do not need a separate title page.

·  Save everything--all drafts and comments-until at least the end of the semester.

·  Proofread all drafts.   If I judge any of your work to be unacceptably littered with errors careful proofreading should have caught (probably about two errors on a page), I will return it to you for proofreading and correcting.  You will then have 24 hours to return it.  Please use The Everyday Writer and the Writing Center, specifically our designated tutor, to help you with specific problems.

·  Citation format for this course is the MLA; guidelines are in The Everyday Writer.

·  I will not accept assignments that are turned in past the due date as specified in the syllabus.

·  When assignments are due, please bring them with you to class to turn in; assignments that come to me through the campus mailboxes, as email attachments, or slid under my office door will not be accepted.

·  Additional information for some assignments will be forthcoming.

 Other Course Guidelines

 No hats are to be worn by men or women during class time.

·  Drinking is permissible, eating during class time is not.

·  In a 50-minute class, there should be no need to leave class; we'll take a break when we meet Wednesdays for two 50-minute sessions.

·  Cell phones should be turned off for the duration of the class.

·  Each student should have her/his own copy of the texts--I will not lend my copies.

 Grading Scale:        

A = 100-94

A- = 90-93

B+ = 87-89

B = 84-86        

B- = 80-83        

C+ = 77-79        

C = 74-76        

C- = 70-73

D+ = 67-69

D = 64-66

D- = 60-63

 Designated Writing Center Tutor

 For this class, we have the expertise of a Designated Tutor in the campus Writing Center, Nathan Heggem.  Nathan has been trained to work with all levels of students on their writing utilizing a conversation and questioning method during one-on-one consultations.  The goal is to help you articulate you ideas more clearly in writing.  Nathan receives all of the course material you do—the syllabus and writing prompts, the rubrics used to evaluate writing—and he’ll meet with me periodically.  For any and all of these writing assignments, he is your most knowledgeable tutor in the Writing Center. The Writing Center is in Confer/Vickner Hall, in Confer 232. 

 Illness in America Interview Project

 Part 1                        (20%) (6-8 pages)           

The concept of “illness” is constructed—by medicine and its practitioners, researchers, the news media, your family and friends.  In order to better understand the constructed nature of illness, you’ll interview at least 12 people about their understanding of illness and their understanding of what it means in United States culture and in their experiences.

 Part 2                        (30%) (10-12 pages)

 You’ll expand and rework the first part of the interview essay in order to incorporate your argument and your research based on this question:  what is illness in America? 

 The specifics of this seemingly simple question are these:  you must build your essay around the interviews you conducted for part 1 of this interview project; you must use at least four texts from different historical periods as evidence to make you case (the texts can be from the syllabus).  You’re looking for a coherent thesis that demonstrates your best understanding of the topic and makes an argument about what illness in America is.  You must use secondary sources--criticism, for example.  And consider this essay a semester-long ongoing process--it will go through multiple drafts, you’ll work in peer groups to critique one another’s drafts, you’ll talk one-on-one with me about the draft, and you’ll take advantage of the Writing Center’s expertise in working through it. 

 Short Responses (5 total, 4 will be graded; 2 and 3 will be revised; page lengths vary)

 Response 1: 5 % (1-2 pages)

 You’ve drawn your idea of “illness”—now take two pages and explain what it means.

 Response 2: 5 % (2 pages)

 Given Wiggleworth and Mather’s texts, if you’re a good and thoughtful Puritan leader, what rules, regimes, or routines can you put into your community to prevent and/or cure illness?

 Response 3: 5% (2-3 pages)

 Usually when we think about illnesses such as cancer or tuberculosis, we think about tumors and cells, blood work and pharmaceuticals.  Consider Susan Sontag’s descriptions of these diseases: how does the way she writes about illness affect what you think of “cancer” or “TB”?

 Response 4: 5% (2-3 pages)

 Select one of the nine people-patients we meet in Part One of The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat.  We come to learn of their diagnoses, but would you call them ill?

 Response 5: 5% (2-3 pages)

 In The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Lia Lee clearly is a patient.  Who or what else is “ill”?  And why do you think that?  (If you can see multiple people or entities as “ill,” please focus on just one)

 Contemporary Case Study Research and Written Response (15% of total grade)

 Over the semester, we’ll pause from reading literature and criticism and turn our attention to popular sources of information—newspapers, magazines, even TV shows—in order to consider how illness is presented and constructed by public opinion.  During the semester, we’ll focus on three areas for these contemporary case studies: illness and religion; mental illnesses; and illness and the environment.

 For each of these, each of you is expected to come to class that day with 3-5 recent media examples of the particular topics.  In order to do this, you’ll need to keep constantly vigilant—read the newspapers (free in the student center!), pay attention to the news, check reputable news organizations websites.  Bring those media examples to class-either cut them out from the newspaper or print them off.  We’ll spend those class days discussing your discoveries, and talking about how issues such as illness and religion, or mental illnesses get covered, by the media.

 For each of the three contemporary case studies, you’ll turn in your 3-5 examples and a 2-3 page response to how these media reports compare with one or more texts for class on the same topic.  On the syllabus, these are listed as R&R.

 Participation (10% of total grade)

 Participation comprises a significant portion of the final grade for this course--texts need to be read, talked about, interpreted, argued over, and synthesized verbally.  There is not one "right" answer in our discussions, no single correct way to interpret a text.  I don't have the answer or secret code that will open up our readings, and neither do you.  Rather, together, we'll work through our subject matter, thinking out loud, drawing on each other's ideas to gain a more sophisticated understanding of the material.  In short, it's vital that we talk with each other about what were reading and thinking about, explore ideas, and take what seem to be far-reaching leaps of our critical imagination.

 At the beginning of the semester, you'll have the opportunity to earn 10 points toward your final grade based on your engaged and constructive participation in class.  How can you best earn these points?  Start by reading the assigned text, making notes in the margins, thinking of connections with other texts we've examined or relevant topics in other classes.   Then, come to class the day we'll be discussing the reading--I like to ask open-ended questions, play devil's advocate, look for similarities in readings across the weeks--all of these strategies will allow you to respond, further expand on your ideas, and create arguments.  You should take on the responsibility of asking questions, critiquing texts, and in general, making yourself a more sophisticated reader of the material.  The abilities to thoughtfully express opinions, listen to others, and critically examine texts are vital in whatever you do--consider this class an opportunity to find your voice.