Autobiography of Sand: Relief Map of a Drifting Mind

I am working on a verse memoir of concussion, the central image of which is an abandoned landscape covered by sand, the Cape Flats outside of Cape Town. Students drawn to literature, history, chemistry, geography, medical research, and medical humanities (and the connections between them) are most likely to find the research partnership of interest. Our partnership will take the form of weekly discussions of the previous week’s research, reading, written impressions, and reflections on the most compelling and provocative insights gleaned from the following:

• scientific studies, historical scholarship, and literary and artistic engagements with the subject of sand, globally and particularly in relation to South Africa
• a similar disciplinary range of material on the Cape landscape, from the precolonial to the contemporary periods
• everything that has been written on the Cape Flats that would resonate with the project
• medical research on concussion and Parkinson’s
• autobiographies about concussion and Parkinson’s
• autobiographies that take an unusual form