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Hypersensitive: Literature and Autoimmunity
Hypersensitiv: Literatur und Autoimmunität
Last Updated: 2026-06-03 00:07:47
Abstract
Hypersensitivity – pathological reactions to otherwise harmless antigens – is on the rise. Autoimmune diseases and allergies impact our present and future societies. How did literature shape the sensitive and hypersensitive body and its illnesses? And how do culture and the arts react to a society of increasingly “intolerant” bodies?
Objective
The lecture provides insights into the relationship of medicine and literature and how cultural history and literature co-conceptualize and shape contemporary phenomena and scientific discourse on health and illness. It aims at an understanding of the historical development of diseases, offers structural methods to analyze literature, philosophy, film and art to enhance scientific perspectives.
Content
Around the globe, hypersensitivity – pathological reactions to otherwise harmless antigens – is on the rise. In the next decades, autoimmune diseases and allergies are bound to spread and will remain some of the biggest challenges of future medicine. We will consider this epidemic in three different aspects: 1) how literature and culture treat such newer medical phenomena, how they use it as a philosophical metaphor and what pathways they open up to narration (e.g., the tropes “Sneeze of Doom” and “Plot Allergy”), 2) how language and the arts have contributed to understanding the “intolerant body” through history (nostalgia, melancholia, consumption, nervosity) and how they turned the body first sensitive and then hypersensitive in the 20th century, 3) what a hypersensitive society entails for the practice of reading in 2026: if bodies had never felt (and reacted) as much as they do now, what would it mean for them to read text? Does it explain the rise of autofiction or BookTok genres like New Adult? And could it explain why we read the present as “polycrisis”?
General Information
- Language
- German
- Levels
- DS , MSC
Examination
- Type
- graded semester performance
Course Components
| Type | Title | Time & Place | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| lecture | Hypersensitiv: Literatur und Autoimmunität | No time listed | 2 h weekly |
Offered In
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Science in Perspective (In “Science in Perspective”-courses students learn to reflect on ETH’s STEM subjects from the perspective of humanities, political and social sciences. Only the courses listed below will be recognized as "Science in Perspective" courses.)
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Type A: Enhancement of Reflection Competence (SiP courses are recommended for bachelor students after their first-year examination and for all master- or doctoral students. All SiP courses are listed in Type A. Courses listed under Type B are only recommendations for enrollment for specific departments.)
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