ENGL4434 · English

Topics in Creative Nonfiction: Writing Mental Health

Morrissey College of Arts & Sciences

Topics in CNF: Writing Mental Health:"Much madness is divinest sense/to a discerning eye" so begins one of Emily Dickinson's most famous poems. How do writers treat mental health as a subject? What are the issues and questions that arise when contemplating such a large and complex area? In this workshop students will write their own essays in a variety of non-fiction styles (reportage, opinion, profile, narrative, memoir) to address issues of mental health such as mental illness, addiction, neurology and neuropsychology, behavior, and medical history. We'll read short works from a wide selection of writers across disciplines that may include: TaNehisi Coates, Oliver Sacks, Elizabeth Wurtzel, William Styron, Mary Karr, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Alice Miller, Leslie Jamison, and poems of Theodore Roethke, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, documentary, and photographic work of Dior Vargas.