LITERATURE AND MEDICINE

MEDHIST 740

Narrative medicine is the practice of using stories to understand health and illness in the context of people's lives. Whether through fiction or nonfiction, poetry or prose, text or graphics, giving voice to the stories of patients and caregivers allows their experiences to be heard, made sense of, and valued. Learning to listen to others and to express one's own vulnerabilities are valuable tools for all health practitioners, but they are especially valuable in the context of public health. The scope of public health interventions encourages practitioners to think in terms of populations, but efforts to improve quality of life through prevention must ultimately be grounded in individual lives. Explore how narrative medicine techniques can enrich the practice of public health, both through the power of listening to stories to understand how individuals experience health and through the power of telling stories to mobilize communities.

ENGL/HISTSCI/MEDHIST 525

Explores how a humanistic perspective can broaden our understanding of health and medicine. Specifically, we will examine the role of language and culture in the creation and circulation of biomedical knowledge; our lived experiences with illness (physical and mental); the intricate intersections of race, gender, sexuality, disability and medicine; the political dimensions of diagnosis, disease, and epidemics, and the role that fiction, creative non-fiction, comics, and film play in shaping our experiences with health and medicine as health care providers and as patients. The course does not assume any background in science or medicine. One of our recurrent topics, in fact, will be to consider how non-experts interact with medicine and its technical vocabularies. Although the primary objective of the course is to understand the cultural, social, and political dimensions of health and medicine, a secondary objective is for students to become more savvy patients and, for the few students who might emerge on the other side of the stethoscope one day, more well rounded health care professionals.

ENGL/HISTSCI/MEDHIST 599

Offers students enrolled in the Health and the Humanities certificate an opportunity to conduct independent research under the guidance of a faculty member. It allows students who have enrolled in or completed a Health and the Humanities Capstone an opportunity to go into greater depth on a topic covered in the capstone course. In consultation with a faculty member, students will design a project that builds on lessons learned or work completed as part of their capstone experience.

FRENCH 464

Choice of themes and periods studied will vary, and may range from historical surveys of the meanings of health and illness across the spectrum of French and Francophone cultures, to a close examination of texts or literary genres from a particular time that incorporate or respond to biomedical knowledge. Genre studied could include prose fiction, theater, creative non-fiction, film, comics, and works of medical popularization. Taught in French.

MEDHIST 744

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.