Medical Humanities

Catalog description

Medical humanities draws on many disciplines and fields—including history, literature, art history, media studies, philosophy, law, ethics, religion, theology, anthropology, psychology, sociology, and other arts and sciences—to study the context of medicine, the experience of medicine, the goals of medicine, and concepts in and of medicine. A common goal of medical humanities is to make clinicians, at all levels of their training, more “humane” or “compassionate.” Another common goal includes making clinicians more “well-rounded.” Still another goal includes promoting teaching and learning in medical humanities simply for its own sake. But what is “medical humanities”? While there is no single answer to this question, this much is clear: Medical humanities draws from many disciplines and fields to examine issues related to the development and the practice of medicine. In this sense, medical humanities is similar to other fields such as religious studies or gender studies—fields that use various disciplines and methods to study a subject such as religion or gender. What is different, however, is that medical humanities, unlike many other academic fields, seems to require or to imply an essential practical component because all medical humanities knowledge has some relationship to (1) the care of patients and/or populations or (2) the care of physicians themselves. This course will explore a vast array of topics in medical humanities, including the boundaries and the goals of medicine (philosophy); the relationship between narrative and medicine (literature); contemporary health issues (policy); human rights and human rights abuses (ethics); and death and dying (religion). It is my hope that we will come away with an increased understanding of ourselves and our relation to the world of medicine—that, in other words, we will examine our own lives, learning how to love and to work with all the fullness that life affords.