How can we cross the gap between human minds? What does a brain scan reveal and what does it demand of us? How should we define intelligence, consciousness, and knowledge? Raising these and other questions, this course explores the literature and science of cognitive difference at various historical moments and geographic locations, touching on issues that affect everything from how we define justice to how we make end-of-life decisions. Readings are likely to include Margaret Fuller’s Summer on the Lakes, Oliver Sacks’s The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Temple Grandin’s Thinking in Pictures, Alva Noë’s Out of Our Heads, Hana Roš and Matteo Farinella’s ,i>Neurocomic, and the TV series Legion

Course Requirements:

Major assignments include a midterm essay on a text we read in class and a final creative project.