Graduate Course Proposal
Prof. Susan M. Schultz
October, 2013
Literature of
Alzheimer's
According
to the Alzheimer's Association, five million Americans are living
with Alzheimer's disease or other dementia. One in three seniors dies
with the disease. By 2050, the disease will cost the USA (alone) over
one trillion dollars a year. Recognition of Alzheimer's as a disease
has inspired a literature of and about it, including novels, poetry,
and memoirs. But it also provokes the reader of Modernist and
Postmodernist literature to reconsider works of literature by
Gertrude Stein, Samuel Beckett and other writers whose use of
language often resembles that of someone suffering early to
mid-Alzheimer's. It asks readers to consider how different cultures
approach the disease. It provokes the consumer of popular culture to
take a close look at television shows, movies, and advertising that
engages with Alzheimer's. It demands that the citizen look at
parallels between the ways in which Alzheimer's sufferers and
“illegal aliens” are described in similar terms, and similarly
(in some ways, if not others) are put in “homes” for their and
society's “safety,” and to prevent them from “wandering”
across “borders.” It asks questions of the scholar of life
writing about how best to write about the illness. And it asks
questions of all of us about identity issues: what makes us human? Is
there a point beyond which we are no longer ourselves? Why are most
of us so afraid of acquiring Alzheimer's? Are we the sum total of our
memories, or are there another bases to our being human?
This
course will address these issues by engaging with literature (and
film) of and about Alzheimer's. Students of literary history and
creative writing will be invited either to work toward a final
critical project on literary works, or toward a creative project
(poetry, fiction, memoir) that uses Alzheimer's either as content, as
theme, or as manifested in language use. We will have visitors from
Gerontology and Disability Studies, as well as a field trip to an
Alzheimer's home. There will be a final project of 20 pages of
writing, as well as blog posts every week, and a significant amount
of reading. Students will be asked to lead discussions and to report
on Alzheimer's related writing they find in the mainstream media and
on-line.
Readings
will include books (or selections) by Daniel Schacter on how memory
works and files; Jesse Ballenger on the history of Alzheimer's in the
United States; Gertrude Stein (and an essay on her work by Michael D.
Snediker); Samuel Beckett's Rockaby;
Don
DeLillo's Falling
Man; Thomas
DeBaggio's Losing
My Mind (a
rare memoir by a journalist who had Alzheimer's); David Chariandy's
Soucouyant;
Lawrence Cohen's No
Aging in India: Alzheimer's, the Bad Family, and Other Modern Things;
Poetry/Shi (Korean
film with Alzheimer's theme) and other video projects; B. S.
Johnson's experimental novel, House
Mother Normal; Catherine
Malabou's philosophical projects, The
New Wounded: From Neurosis to Brain Damage and
What Should We Do
With Our Brain? While,
as a rule I do not teach my own work, I would consider asking
students to read one of the volumes of my two volume mixed genre
series, Dementia
Blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment