English

ENGL5283	The Culture of Physic: Women's Writing and Medicine in Early Modern England (O)	3 ch (3S) (W)
Examine how the textual practices associated with medical care and knowledge infiltrated women’s literary writing. Diagnosis of illness, making medicines, and preventing disease were recognized as essential knowledge for seventeenth-century mothers and housewives, and women practised medicine at home and as professional practitioners. Beginning with feminist critiques of medicine and relevant history of medicine scholarship, readings explore how early modern autobiography, poetry, fiction, and drama consider reproductive care, childbirth, disease, sociability, disability, race, and empire. Prerequisite: B+ average in ENGL; open to ENGL Honours students.