Introduction to the Medical Humanities
Introduction to the medical humanities and their application to clinical practice, utilizing humanistic approaches from history, philosophy, anthropology, literary studies, and religious studies.
Summary
What you’ll be able to do
Identify the different humanistic approaches that fall under the umbrella of the medical humanities, and compare and contrast the strengths of these approaches for understanding health and illness.
Apply techniques from the medical humanities to analyze literature, film, podcasts, and visual art.
Locate one’s own experiences of health and illness in broader societal and historical contexts, and recognize how the meaning and experience of health might differ for people occupying different social positions.
Critically examine harms caused by medicine and scientific research in both a historical and contemporary context.
Identify the ways in which the experiences of marginalized people may frequently be invalidated by the medical community, and understand how the invalidation of personal experience can constitute both physical and structural violence.
Translate the experience of bearing witness into specific actions, taken on an individual or societal level, to help alleviate suffering and promote human flourishing.
Source: UW Guide
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Prerequisites
Course mapMED SC-M 810, 811, 812, and 813
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Professors
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Student experience
the class
Introduction to the medical humanities and their application to clinical practice, utilizing a variety of humanistic approaches, drawing from history, philosophy, anthropology, literary studies, and religious studies. Engage with a variety of forms of expression, including essays, poetry, film, podcasts, music, and visual art. These humanistic approaches complement the science-focused approach of contemporary medical education by enhancing students' ability to offer more compassionate and culturally competent care, and helping students build resiliency through using artistic forms of expression to process their experiences. Engage with the medical humanities through a different theme, such as the doctor-patient relationship, death and dying, or healing and wholeness.
difficulty & workload
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Topics
- History, philosophy, anthropology, literary studies, and religious studies
- Essays, poetry, film, podcasts, music, and visual art
- Doctor-patient relationship, death and dying, healing and wholeness
- Invalidation of marginalized people's experiences by the medical community
Skills
- Compare humanistic approaches for understanding health and illness
- Analyze literature, film, podcasts, and visual art using medical humanities techniques
- Contextualize personal health experiences within societal and historical frameworks
- Examine harms caused by medicine and scientific research
- Identify invalidation of marginalized experiences as physical and structural violence
- Translate bearing witness into actions to alleviate suffering and promote flourishing
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Explore recorded gradesRecorded 2026-10-14
Model outputs & technical records
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Model & dataset provenance
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