I should start this by stating that I am a medical biology major on the pre-medicine track, hoping on the one day of finally obtaining my doctorate in medicine. I took this class as it’s a prerequisite for the English minor I also have in my undergraduate career. Now, pre-medicine and English seem to be two completely different tracks. So, how do I personally compare the two? Specifically, how would the elements of literary criticism influence the “wider intellectual and cultural context” of what I do in my major courses? My main answer to that is primarily based on just observing the syllabus of any one of my major courses. From my major courses, take AP&P for example, the syllabus focuses so much on the science aspect of things that it sort of forgets the outside real-world purpose of why the learning is being done in the first place. In a sense, this makes the course seem robotic and very “learn this to learn”. I feel like critical theory, in a way, reminds me of the fact that there are still human elements outside of what I just learn in science. Like in “The Venus Hottentot”, the first part sort of relates to the work that I do in my major in the sense that it glorifies the artistic merit of science. But, when the second part is revealed, it brings out an outer emotional side and wakes the viewer up in that inside every human body is a person. So, that’s how I’d compare the two. My major courses teach me the fundamental aspects of what keeps a human running, but this course reminds me that there is an identity behind every subject. A patient may have scleroderma. My AP&P course would teach me the mechanics behind this diagnosis, but this course would reinforce the fact that this person is human. This person has a sex, how would that affect the way they’re looked at? They have a race; how would that affect the way they’re looked at? Critical theory reminded me of the humanity behind the mechanistic characteristics of a human machine.
