Abstract This opinion piece advocates for literature courses that examine the United States’ mental health crisis from the perspective of neurodiverse writers. This is not a short-term solution to the crisis, but over time courses can have a powerful impact on students’ attitudes toward and understanding of mental illness. Courses engaging in this work will advance the cause of social justice and the full inclusion of neurodiverse students and faculty in our classrooms and on our campuses.

AbstractThis article reports on an undergraduate course centered on autobiographies written by people who manage mental illnesses. Students learned about neurodiversity from multiple perspectives, examined social and medical models of mental illness, developed interpretive skills, and advanced their ability to write compellingly about both literature and their own experiences.

This article presents the authors’ innovative approach to the challenges of teaching students in a large lecture survey course to perform effective close readings, and sets forth a rigorous qualitative assessment of students’ learning. It describes a combination of teaching strategies integrated to encourage students’ skills acquisition as well as content mastery, and to make the course writing intensive without also being grading intensive. It demonstrates the effectiveness of these strategies by analyzing evidence of student learning. The authors advocate for an instructional model that gives students ample opportunity for active learning and for practicing close reading skills. The authors conclude with a brief coda calling for more scholarship and reflection on faculty-graduate student collaboration in both scholarship and teaching.