The course focuses on the relishing and suffering body. We shall trace carnal  phenomena, such as birth, eating, sexuality, disease, injury, violence and aging in prose works by Sh.Y. Agnon, Amos Oz, Ah'haron Appelfeld, Yehudit Hendel, Haviva Pdaya, Orly Castel-Bloom, Yuval Shimoni and others. We shall map physical, mental, social, political, verbal and gendered traits of pain. We will address the wish to tranquilize pain, the capacity to ignore pain, the desire to inflict pain on ourselves and on others, as well as tactics of surviving physical and mental pain, empathy and healing. 

In view of Freud, Lacan, Agamben, Elain Scarry , Jean Ameri, cathy caruth and others, we will question the possibilities to represent pain: is it possible to express pain artistically and verbally? through the stories we read we shall discover if and how pain isolates us from others and expose the call for empathy that is concealed in the discourse of pain, all the more poignantly involving the body in verbal communication.  

Course requirements: Full attnednace in classes, reading and preparing for class discussion, final paper.