Description
This module explores the experience of illness. It focuses in particular on tensions between subjective and objective, examining how rich and socially embedded interpretive responses to the experience of illness, can and should be brought into dialogue with biomedical, philosophical, and sociological understandings of the same phenomena. Ìý
The first half of the course focuses on the role of narrative in constituting selves and illness experiences. We examine some ways in which those living with illness construct narratives to give expression to their experiences, and what a focus experience and narratives adds to a more biomedical conception of illness. The second half focuses on the intersection between biology, power and culture in constructing responses to illness, examining ideas of care and suffering, disability, stigma, illness experiences that struggle to receive recognition from biomedical science, and living under genetic risk. The sessions will be accompanied by an Illness reading group of four sessions. Ìý
Module deliveries for 2024/25 academic year
Last updated
This module description was last updated on 19th August 2024.
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