Type of Course: Graduate

Close reading a Twitter thread: Blind on the NHS

2 page (total) text presented here is a health narrative presented as a Twitter thread that raises issues that could be connected to several themes in courses related to health communication, reproductive justice, public health, narrative medicine, or more general writing courses to which the instructor wanted to add a health component. The outline includes detailed instructions for close reading the text, a central form of inquiry in narrative medicine. The goal of this instructional strategy is to can help participants attend closely to the narrative and find a point of personal connection to it. The format of the health narrative – a thread of about 20 tweets – lends itself to analyzing the role or impact of the medium on circulation of the message. Short enough to read aloud in a 45-50 minute class and work from there; could also be used in a workshop or storytelling group centered on prenatal care and/or disability.

Class outline for teaching Parsons’ Sick Role

Outline for a 60 minute lecture/discussion on Talcott Parsons’ concept of “the sick role.” Arguments for the significance of patient voice and narrative (e.g., Arthur Frank’s Wounded Storyteller) often take Parson’s sick role as a point of contrast. Likewise, the practice of narrative medicine by physicians is a rejection of the paternalistic and objective physician that is the counterpart to the “sick patient” in Parson’s analysis.

The outline is from an upper-division undergraduate course on health narratives offered in a department of Rhetoric & Media Studies (the course also enrolls students studying sociology, English, and pre-health). The class outline provides a very brief background to Parsons’ larger project, goes into some detail about the elements of the sick role and the corresponding role of the physician. The session ends with discussion questions about the implications of this concept.

Tourette Syndrome: The biomedical and the literary.

The blog “According to the Arts” is written for the general public. The posts juxtapose a medical description of an illness or disability, in this case Tourette Syndrome, with a novel in which one of the main characters exhibits the condition. The novel captures the signs and symptoms, and describes how Tourette syndrome can affect lives of people living with Tourette and of living with someone who has it. The biomedical text from a neurology journal describes the characteristic tics and behaviors. Comparing the story to the medical account shows the science vs humanities perspectives on illness and could be useful for undergraduate classes in health humanities, especially ones focused on writing. Also useful for health professions students and professionals to emphasize the human factors often missed in clinical encounters.