Literature & Medicine

SYLLABUS

Faulkner Hospital, 2005

Facilitator: Alyce Getler

Hospital Liaison: Benny Gavi, M.D. (office phone 983-7373; page 983-7100; bgavi@partners.org)

Location: Atrium 1 Conference Room (postponed meetings to snow dates will be in Atrium 2)

Day and Time: Wednesdays, 5:00 to 8:00 PM

Session 1: January 12 (snow date January 19)

The clinician in the community

Abraham Verghese, My Own Country (memoir)
Veneta Masson, poems from Rehab at the Florida Avenue Grill

"Admission"
"Another Case of Chronic Pelvic Pain"

Session 2: February 9 (snow date February 16)

Pressures and vulnerabilities in the hospital

Mikhail Bulgakov, "The Steel Windpipe" (story)
Danny Abse, "Case History" (poem)
Constance Studer, "Mercy" (story)
Carolyn Barbier, "Nighthawks" (story)
Veneta Masson, "Passages" (poem)

Session 3: March 9 (snow date March 16)

Confronting mortality

Audre Lorde, The Cancer Journals (memoir)

"Admission"
"Another Case of Chronic Pelvic Pain"

Session 4: April 13 (snow date April 20)

Losses and triumphs: individuals and families coping with disability

Nancy Mairs, "On Being Cripple" (essay)
Tennessee Williams, "The Glass Menagerie (play)
The Color of Paradise (film)

Session 5: May 11

Changing Places: The healer as patient and patient advocate

Kay Redfield Jamison, "An Unquiet Mind" (essay)
Cortney Davis, "The Other Side of Illness" (essay)
Richard Weinberg, "The Laying On of Hands" (essay)
Jerome Groopman, "Our Firstborn Son" (essay)

Session 6: June 8

Moments of grace: finding solace, human and spiritual

Raymond Carver, "A Small, Good Thing" (story)
Adam Haslett, "War's End" (story), from You Are Not a Stranger Here
Sandra McCollum, "Between Yes and No" (vignette)
Jane Kenyon poems:

"Let Evening Come"
"Notes from the Other Side"