ABSTRACT
We need to include the teaching of literature – including rhetoric – as part of our undergraduate writing courses focused on health literacies. In this chapter, I argue that the notion of literature-as-rhetoric can provide the groundwork for writing more technical documents, given that literature-as-rhetoric emphasizes communication, unity between patient and physician, and humanity. As a case study, I discuss a writing in the health sciences course that I designed and taught at a small liberal arts university in the Midwest, a course that emphasized the rhetorical aesthetic of literary works from health humanities and narrative medicine. Class members studied readings from medical and health humanities, a play, some poetry, short stories, various works of art, a memoir, readings from narrative medicine, and supporting articles, and they wrote a pathography and a paper that described their discovery of a relationship between health, humanities, and communication. Students believed that the learning experiences gave them a different but valuable perspective than those provided in their other classes. Rhetorical aesthetics, described briefly in this chapter, provides the groundwork for the class that students rated highly.
