I am an English major interested in how literature tends to the mind and how the written word can come to both reveal and conceal issues of illness and health.This semester, with the assistance of Anne Dalke, I will be exploring mental illness through the emerging field of disability studies.
“We do not know our own souls, let alone the souls of others. Human beings do not go hand in hand the whole stretch of the way. There is a virgin forest in each; a snowfield where even the print of birds’ feet is unknown. Here we must go alone and like it better so. Always to be accompanied, always to be understood would be intolerable.” --Virginia Woolf, “On Being Ill”
I have felt very grudging toward usages of 'genre' which expand the word beyond a strictly literary term. Of course humans categorize all aspects of their existence, and there's no need to take terms from one categoried area and apply it to another. That increases the sloppiness of categorization, by using an unneeded metaphor.
