Premise Course: How do illness and pain define the human experience? Zadie Smith’s Intimations and Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor
Online N/A, Portland, OR, United StatesIllness is a defining aspect of the human experience. In this course we will explore the question: How do illness and pain define and shape the human experience? We’ll read and discuss Susan Sontag’s classic 1978 essay Illness as Metaphor and a selection of essays in Zadie Smith’s newest collection. Participants will read Smith’s essays about Covid and our collective understanding of how disease shapes who we are. Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor: In 1978 Susan Sontag wrote Illness as Metaphor, a classic work described by Newsweek as "one of the most liberating books of its time." A cancer patient herself when she was writing the book, Sontag shows how the metaphors and myths surrounding certain illnesses, especially cancer, add greatly to the suffering of patients…