ENGL0287A-F23
Posthuman Medicine
Posthuman Medicine: Morals, Machines, and Bodies
Medical treatments and technologies now keep people alive when they once surely would have died. But the increasing power of medicine has also raised nightmarish possibilities of lives controlled, squandered, or sacrificed to a system that often alienates patients, is centered on profit, and has a long history of treating marginal populations recklessly. How do science fiction writers, doctors, film makers, memoirists, and healthcare corporations portray an ever more medicalized vision of human experience and human bodies? Texts and films for the course will include HG Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau, Atul Gawande, Complications; Octavia Butler, Clay’s Ark; Michael Gondry, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Karen Russell, Sleep Donation, and Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go.
Medical treatments and technologies now keep people alive when they once surely would have died. But the increasing power of medicine has also raised nightmarish possibilities of lives controlled, squandered, or sacrificed to a system that often alienates patients, is centered on profit, and has a long history of treating marginal populations recklessly. How do science fiction writers, doctors, film makers, memoirists, and healthcare corporations portray an ever more medicalized vision of human experience and human bodies? Texts and films for the course will include HG Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau, Atul Gawande, Complications; Octavia Butler, Clay’s Ark; Michael Gondry, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Karen Russell, Sleep Donation, and Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go.
- Term:
- Fall 2023
- Location:
- Axinn Center 104(AXN 104)
- Schedule:
- 11:15am-12:30pm on Tuesday, Thursday (Sep 11, 2023 to Dec 11, 2023)
- Type:
- Lecture
- Course Modality:
- In-Person
- Instructors:
- Michael Newbury
- Subject:
- English
- Department:
- English
- Division:
- Literature
- Requirements Fulfilled:
- LIT
- Levels:
- Undergraduate
- Cross-Listed As:
- AMST0287A-F23
- Availability:
- View availability, prerequisites, and other requirements.
- Course Reference Number (CRN):
- 92178
- Subject Code:
- ENGL
- Course Number:
- 0287
- Section Identifier:
- A