This course will introduce students to the cultural history of medicine by using the scholarly and popular literature generated by experiences of cancer in the modern world. Students will explore how disease makes history in two senses. First, we will scrutinize the vast cultural production generated by experiences of disease and consider how these materials might help us reimagine the medical historical archive. Second, going beyond the history of medicine, we will study how cancer shapes, and in turn is shaped by, the history of gender, race, capitalism, colonialism, technology, and the environment. Assigned materials include scholarly monographs, articles, autobiographies, graphic novels, documentaries, and photographs.
