INTRODUCTION TO NARRATIVE MEDICINE

Narrative competence is a crucial dimension of health-care delivery, the capacity to attend and respond to stories of illness, and the narrative skills to reflect critically on the scene of care and its contexts. The objectives of this introductory course include fortifying close reading skills and engaging theories of relationality and self-telling. Narrative Medicine explores and builds the clinical applications of literary knowledge.

At the center of this project is the medical encounter. In examining the complexities of this exchange, to help clinicians to fulfill their "receiving" duties more effectively, we will turn to narrative theory, autobiographical theory, psychoanalytic theory, trauma scholarship and witnessing literature. Classwork will integrate didactic and experiential methodologies to develop a heightened awareness of self and other and to build a practical set of narrative competencies.

Readings will include works by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Maggie Nelson, Toni Morrison, W.G. Sebald, Kazuo Ishiguro, Alison Bechdel, Judith Butler, Arthur Frank, Jonathan Shay, Jens Brockmeier, Donnel Stern, and Tim O’Brien.