English: Literature and Medicine

Education facts

Code: ENGC17

<p>The course examines how medicine—as art, practice, and science—has shaped representations of individuals and public institutions in literature, and how literature, in turn, has historically influenced medical thinking and practice.</p><p>This course is grounded in the interdisciplinary field of the medical humanities and focuses on the dynamic relationship between literature and medicine. You study how literary texts reflect and shape understandings of health, illness, the body, and care across different historical periods and cultural contexts.</p><p>A key focus of the course is the affective dimension of health and illness. Literary texts are examined for how they invite readers to engage with powerful and often difficult emotions such as shame, embarrassment, vulnerability, and suffering. Central topics for debate include the role of empathy in reading and the pro-social function of literature, as well as strands of the medical humanities that seek to give voice to difficult, unspoken, unrecognised, or invisible experiences of illness and care.</p>

Entry requirements

General eligibility and 30 credits (hp) from the humanities, social sciences, or medicine.

Education offerings

Each offering has its own dates and conditions. Closed offerings are retained as history and do not mean that a new application is open.

• English: Literature and Medicine

  Lund University

  Lund

  Start date: 2 November 2026

  End date: 17 January 2027

  Pace of study: 50 %