GEH 101

Course Description:

The meanings of the body, health, and illness, as represented in literature, medical writings, and selected works of visual art will be our focus in this year-long introductory humanities course. Looking at texts and images in the Western tradition from the period of the Hebrew Bible through the late Renaissance, we’ll investigate the way the body is theorized, problematized, dramatized, medicalized, and humanized/dehumanized by medicine and literature. We’ll also look at some visual art and its representation of the body. While the course is neither a broad survey of the humanities nor an intensive course on the literature or medicine of this time period, our explorations of specific works and themes will offer gateways to further exploration and study during your CSUSM career (and after).

This course is part of a first-year Learning Community and is linked to GESS 101 (Professor Pedersen) and GEW (Professor Hanson). You’ll find many points of contact among the assignments you do for the three courses; try to pay attention to the connections and please do bring them up in class as appropriate. In addition, on at least two occasions Professor Pedersen and I will pool the course time for GEH and GESS (10-12:45) and use the entire block for interdisciplinary activities such as field trips.

GEH 102 follows this course in Spring 2003, exploring similar themes in later time periods.

Learning Objectives:

Explore how literature and the philosophy of medicine define the meaning of the body, with emphasis on significant texts of ancient/classical, medieval, and Renaissance culture and the personal and social meanings of:
- Pain and suffering
- Epidemic and fatal illness (plague)
- “Beauty” and “ugliness” and their relationships to concepts of health and illness
- Human bodily variation (gender and other “differences”; “monsters” & “marvels”
- Gender and other forms of “difference”

Develop a working knowledge of significant thought in the history of medicine (Hippocrates, Galen, Avicenna, Paracelsus, Vesalius, Paré, Harvey) and historical changes in medical models of the healthy/ill body from ancient culture through the late Renaissance.

Expand your understanding of the cultural history of the body to the present day and the definitions of the healthy and ill body that shape your experiences as a citizen, family member, and patient.

Develop your skills as an analytical reader, an effective discussant, and a writer of the “idea paper” or short essay

GEH 101 Fall 2002- Stoddard Holmes

Required Texts:

Bookstore Texts (please purchase immediately)

Sontag, Susan. Illness as Metaphor and AIDS as Metaphor.

Rothman, David, et al., ed. Medicine and Western Civilization

Shakespeare, William. Richard III (also available as e-text)

Also: a good paperback dictionary. Small enough to keep with you as you read, big enough to have unfamiliar words in it!

On-line texts

The Book of Job (Hebrew Bible/Old Testament)

Sophocles, Philoctetes

Boccaccio, The Decameron (selections to be announced)

Bacon, Francis “Of Deformity” and “Of Beauty” (1625)

Other (distributed in class, or put on web or electronic reserve: stay tuned!):

Paré, Ambroise. Of Monsters and Marvels (selections)

Montaigne, Michel de. “Of a Monstrous Child” and “Of the Lame and the Cripple.”

Recommended (not required) Texts (available in Campus Bookstore):

Conrad et al., The Western Medical Tradition.

For a more thorough background in the history of medicine through 1800.

Janson, History of Art.

For a more thorough exploration of changing visual representations of the human body.

Course Policies:

Attendance is required, both in GEH and in the SI section that supports GEH. After two missed classes (one week of class) your final grade will suffer. Missed classes can’t be “made up” as you can’t participate if you aren’t with us.

Along the same lines, please respect the class and your classmates by arriving on time, staying the full class, listening to your classmates and to me, and handling restroom breaks and phone calls outside of class time unless you are having a bona fide emergency.

PLEASE BRING THE TEXT UNDER DISCUSSION TO CLASS EVERY DAY and make a point of anchoring your comments to the texts. This may take practice at first but it is how people make comments and arguments that educate, enlighten, and convince others, which is one of the useful results of a college education.

I expect that you understand and will follow university policies on plagiarism and academic honesty, and will not use another person’s words or ideas without attribution.

Please talk to me this week about disability accommodations that you may need to participate in the class.

GEH 101 Fall 2002- Stoddard Holmes

Assignments and Grading

Participation 20%

(attendance in class AND SI; short written homework assignments; unannounced quizzes; prepared involvement in class)

Short essays on readings (4) 40%

Midterm exam (in-class) 20%

Final exam (in class) 20%

Schedule

Assignments are listed by due date; I may adjust schedule to meet class needs; changes announced in class. Quizzes will NOT be announced in advance.

Date	Topic	Reading Due	Other Due
Week 1 W 9/4	Introductions
Week 2 M 9/9	Ancient/Classical Culture. Imaginative Frameworks for the Body’s Meanings. Discussion: The Book of Job and the meanings of affliction.	Sontag, 3-4 and 93-104. Rothman, Introduction. ALL of The Book of Job (e-text; King James version; pick “printer-friendly version”	Writing: What is Sontag’s central argument? Summarize it in 1-2 sentences. Will be collected. BRING PRINTOUT OF BOOK OF JOB.
W 9/11	Job, continued. Discussion of Paper #1 prompts. Intro to Hippocratic Corpus.	Please preview the reading for Monday.	Think about the many possible meanings of Job’s suffering as presented by the text.
Week 3 M 9/16	Lecture: Medicine in Ancient Egypt and Greece. The Hippocratic Corpus.	Hippocrates, “The Nature of Man” and “The Sacred Disease” (Rothman 43-47 and 139-144 ); “The Hippocratic Oath” (Rothman 261)	Paper #1 Due. 2 typed pages, double-space, 1-inch margins all around. Please remember to spell-check and proofread.
W 9/18	James Luna and body/art. Meet in Visual and Performing Arts Building Rm. 111. I will meet you at GESS and show you the way.	James Luna handout (distributed in class)	Come to the class with a question in mind.
Week 4 M 9/23	Philoctetes and Greek tragedy.	Philoctetes, ALL.	BRING PRINTOUT OF PLAY
W 9/25	Philoctetes, wrap-up. Discussion of Paper #2 prompts.	Please preview Monday’s reading.
Week 5 M 9/30	Lecture: Roman Medicine and Galenism. Intro to Medieval Culture. Boccaccio Readings for Monday announced in class, guiding questions distributed. Using the Boccaccio Web at Brown.	Plato, “Timaeus” (Rothman 48); Aristotle, “The Generation of Animals” (Rothman 79-83); Galen, “The Hand” (Rothman 17-22); Jordan of Turre, “On the Symptoms of Lepers” (209-211).	Paper #2 Due.
Date	Topic	Reading Due	Other Due
Week 5 W 10/2	Guest Lecture: Professor Richardson Hayton	Boccaccio, The Decameron, selections to be announced.	Guiding questions distributed 9/30.
Week 6 M 10/7	Boccaccio, Final Day.	TBA	TBA
W 10/9	FIELD TRIP: Cal. Center for the Arts	TBA	TBA
Week 7 M 10/14	Lecture: Medieval Medicine.	TBA	TBA
W 10/16	Lecture: Medieval Art.	“	“
Week 8 M 10/21	FIELD TRIP TO DALEY RANCH.
W 10/23	GESS double block (this hour in our classroom)
Week 9 M 10/28	MID-TERM REVIEW		Review notes and bring in questions
W 10/30	MID-TERM EXAM		BRING BLUE BOOKS!
Week 10 M 11/4	Lecture: Paracelsus, Vesalius and Renaissance Medicine.	Paracelsus (Rothman 23-32); Vesalius and his observers (Rothman 54-67)	TBA
W 11/6	Renaissance Art	TBA	TBA
Week 11 M 11/11	Ambroise Pare and “Monstrous Imagination”	Paré, handout from On Monsters and Marvels
W 11/13	Pare, continued., Discussion of Paper #3
Week 12 M 11/18	Lecture: Late Renaissance Thought: Mind, Body, and Medicine	Montaigne and Burton (Rothman 152-161)
W 11/20	Montaign, Bacon, and theories of “deformity.” Paper 3 prompt discussed	Montaigne handout Bacon essays (etexts-web)
Week 13 M 11/25	Shakespeare, Richard III	Act I.	Paper #3 due
W 11/27	“	Act II
Week 14 M 12/2	“	Act III
M 12/4	“	Acts IV-V
Week 15 M 12/9	Movie, Richard III		Paper #4 Due.
W 12/11	Movie, Richard III
Week 16 M 12/16	REVIEW DAY
W 12/18	FINAL EXAM 12-2	NOTE NEW TIME!!!	BRING BLUE BOOKS!