Hello Scholars, As you know, we are not meeting today due to Yom Kippur. We will be meeting on Zoom tomorrow, Tuesday 29th at 12:30 p.m. The link is in Blackboard. We will also have a meeting as usual on Wednesday at the same time, depending on demand. I’m going to poll you tomorrow about whether you would prefer to work independently on Wednesday. It seems that my clarification of the Metaphor Assignment process needs further clarification. I added the scaffolding sections mainly for your process, and I did not require you to submit every section. However, you are all so diligent, …

Hello Scholars, Thank you for participating in our library session today. I hope you found it helpful. Before our class on Wednesday, please find two potential sources for your Metaphor Assignment. One of them should be from the library, and the other one can be something you have encountered in your daily life, possibly in advertising or on social media. Please bring them to class. Please find attached Professor Hernandez’s slide show. Narrative Medicine_LibraryInformationLiteracy_MHernandez_2020.pptx  I encourage you to ask Professor Hernandez with help in your search for sources, and also to take her suggestion of keeping your search broad. Searches like “metaphor AND medicine” seemed …

Hello Scholars, We will meet on Zoom today at 12:30 p.m. The link is in Blackboard. Please be ready to share the metaphor you chose to potentially use in your Metaphor Assignment, as well as the field of medicine you are most interested in and why. We will have a look at some sections of the readings by Sontag, Bliss and Wainaina. See you in class! Yolande

Hello All, Thank you for a great class. Your Outsider Narratives final drafts are due on September 23rd Please have a look at the Metaphor Assignment before Wednesday’s class and please read The Trouble With Medicine’s Metaphors.  Also, before Wednesday’s class, please choose a metaphor from one of the readings you received from the Topics Section. It doesn’t have to be from this week’s readings; it can be from anything you’ve read so far. Please also think about whether there is a specific area of medicine you’re interested in, so that I can share both your metaphor and your area of interest with the librarian. If …

Hello All, Tomorrow we will meet in our Zoom classroom at 12:30 p.m. The link is in Blackboard. We will discuss metaphor and rhetoric in relation to the readings by Jabr, Albergotti, and Hemon, and also in relation to the upcoming Metaphor Assignment. I’ll be asking how it went with connecting in your Accountability Groups, and whether you have remaining questions about the Outsider Narrative. See you in class, Yolande

Hello All, Tomorrow we will have an optional meeting on Zoom (link in Blackboard Announcement) to discuss some of the readings (and a video) you received this week in the Topics Section, and how they relate to your Outsider Narrative: The Sources of Narrative Medicine by Rita Charon Close Reading and Creative Writing by Charon et al. The Danger of a Single Story by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie We will also discuss the elements of rhetoric and–if there is demand–we will begin building your Online Portfolios. If everyone who attends agrees, tomorrow’s session will be recorded and posted later in the day. Please remember to respond to at least one of your peer’s Narrative drafts …

Hello All, I hope you had a good weekend! Thank you for your excellent entries in the Discussion Boards.  In tomorrow morning’s class we will look at some of your comments in the Introduction Board, and some elements of the Narrative Drafts. We will also talk about how to write a helpful peer review, and how to most effectively revise our work. The link for tomorrow’s zoom session is in the Blackboard Announcement. See you in class! Professor Brener

Welcome Scholars! This course examines the stories we create about medicine and health. It is presented in two equal parts: a topic seminar and a writing seminar. In this writing section, you will compose an outsider narrative, a metaphor paper, a critical lens essay, and an I-search paper, which is a more informal version of a research paper, based on a topic of personal interest to you. You will read works by wonderful authors including Toni Morrison, Susan Sontag, and William Carlos Williams. We will also look at relevant videos and multimedia content. Finally you will create your own multimedia portfolio containing …