Pain is at once entirely basic and extraordinarily complex. It can lead to loneliness and isolation and it can draw people together. It is somehow both physical and psychic. Why does pain find itself caught in these sorts of dualities or tensions? Why do we often struggle so hard to express pain? What does it mean when we talk about feeling another’s pain? Why do we find ourselves inflicting pain on others or even ourselves? Is it possibly to cultivate arts of enduring pain? In addressing these questions and others, this course is an interdisciplinary examination of the phenomenon of pain.