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Translated from the French, Maylis de Kerangal’s award-winning The Heart reads like a brilliant and moving contemporary medical novel. This course is designed to explore the broader critical, ethical, and philosophical questions that this literary work, which is based on an accident, pursues. Built like a mosaic, our text will prompt discussions on such topics as the meaning and forms taken by “tragedy”, body/mind issues, trauma and its spaces (especially the ER and the ICU), the existential challenges and experiences that shape the collective hospital environment beyond its visible protocols and instruments. A close reading of this book along different paths will help us focus on the ethical, humanistic dilemmas faced in world of modern, highly advanced medical procedures. While its readers must face the darker, mysterious places of human suffering, these are inseparable from compassionate, generous, and sometimes heroic actions that spread collectively across the story. You will be asked to read other texts, as a fuller grasp of what is at stake (scientifically and humanely speaking) in this book, calls for a context, which will be provided by historical research and allusions scattered across our fictional text. Our seminar will thus also explore a long history of beliefs and of piecemeal anatomical or clinical discoveries about the heart that can help us understand the place held by this organ across cultures as well as in our imaginations. One or two guests familiar with the ER will bring us closer to the medical aspects of The Heart. Also planned for this course is the viewing of the film inspired by the book. NB this course fulfills is designed to fulfill the "text" requirement for our minor in CTL.