Course overview
Telling stories about our illnesses has become a widespread and common feature of the modern world. We find these sickness stories on blogs and websites. We tell them in support or therapy groups. They are to be found in best selling books and films. Newspapers and television provide photo-essays, videos and documentaries around the sicknesses of our lives. Every illness from Alzheimer’s and Depression to Cancer and HIV/AIDS has developed its own stories.

This course will critically examine some of these recent trends and the development of what has been called ‘illness narratives’ or narrative medicine. A one-day course can only be exploratory and maybe set agendas: it will aim to introduce some of the key ideas of such research, create a space for discussion of a wider array of such experiences including those of the participants, and develop a series of specific critical debates around the content, purpose and analysis of such analysis.

"Illness is the night side of life, a more onerous citzenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place."
Susan Sontag lllness as Metaphor (p1)

"I would advise every sick person to evolve a style or develop a voice for his or her illness. In my own case I make fun of my illness. I disparage it….adopting a style for your illness is another way of meeting it on your own grounds, of making it a mere character in your narrative."
Anatole Broyard Intoxicated by my illness ( p61)

Who is the course for?
The course will be most useful for practitioners in a wide range of health practice. More and more there is a need for understanding the social circumstances of medical problems and stories and narratives are seen as key tools for gaining access to this. In the USA, narrative medicine is growing as a field in doctors training; in the U.K., stories of patients are becoming of greater interest in nurse training; everywhere social movements around health are finding stories to be an important area of work for self understanding and political awareness of illness. The course may also be of value to those who are thinking of writing their own sickness stories. Some educational background in sociology and narrative would be a distinct advantage.

Further information and reading 
There are no assignments attached to this course but a detailed reading and ‘going further listing’ will be provided on the course. Before the course, it would be ideal if you could look at: Arthur W Frank The Wounded Story Teller: Body Illness and ethics(1995) Chicago 
We will be discussing his work during the day. Some background reading to ‘stories’ could also be helpful: see Ken Plummer Documents of Life-2: An Invitation to a Critical Humanism (2001) Sage (which is out of print but on line).

A short selection of very different sickness stories include:

Anatole Broyard Intoxicated by my illness (1992). New York: Clarkson Potter
Audre Lorde The Cancer Journals (1980) San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books
Paul Monette Borrowed Times: An AIDS memoir (1988) NY: Harcourt
Jean-Dominique Bauby The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly. (2002/2008) London: Harper
Arthur W.Frank At the will of the body: Reflections on illnessHoughton Mifflin 2002
Carolyn Ellis Final Negotations: A story of love, loss and chronic illness Philadelphia: Temple University Press (1995)
Ann Oakley Fracture: Adventures of a Broken BodyPolity (2007)
But find your own examples: they are everywhere.

Tutor information
Ken Plummer is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex. He has been involved in developing a focus on life story and narratives in sociology through teaching and writing for over thirty years. His books include Documents of Life: An Invitation to Critical Humanism ( 1st ed 1983; 2nd ed 2001), Telling sexual Stories: Power, Change and Social Worlds (1995) andIntimate Citizenship: Private Decisions and Public Dialogues (2003). He has fostered a sociology that works against the grain through its focus on individuals, reflexivity and political values – a sociology he calls Critical Humanism. His most recent book Sociology: The Basics (2010) is a call to arms for a sociology that will help make a ‘better world for all’. Between 2004-7 he was seriously ill and has written his own auto/ethnographic account of it. The generosity and skill of a liver transplant saved his life.

More information and how to book a place
Find out more and book a place.