Medical Humanities Track
Track Curriculum 2009/10
Medical humanities is an interdisciplinary field that includes the humanities, social science, and the arts and their application to medical education and practice. The Medical Humanities Track will provide insight into the human condition, suffering, personhood, and our responsibility to each other. Using literature (first person physician/patient narratives, memoirs, and fiction) and the arts (film, theater, visual arts), the various components of the track are designed to help students develop and nurture skills of observation, analysis, empathy, and self-reflection, skills that are essential for humane medical care.
Track Objectives
- Take a critical view of important and influential approaches to humanities and medicine.
- Develop skills in listening to patients' stories through a study of narrative and writing.
- Address questions about how to identify the way that social norms and values function in the medical arena.
Track Activities
Required First-Second Year Activities
Attend a monthly lecture series, complete three six-week courses in the humanities, participate in an experiential opportunity in the summer following first year, submit a project proposal, and complete a project.
Experiential Opportunity:
- The project proposal includes scope of work, a timeline, objectives/goals, and the organization/mentor with which the student will be working including contact information.
- After project completion, students are required to submit a 2-4 page paper to include the student’s project scope, the role the student played in the project, how the project changed from the original proposal, and reflections on the experience.
Required Third & Fourth Year Activities
- POM scholarly project tailored to their medical humanities program
- Complete senior elective in medical humanities
Other Activities
- Medical School book group
- Film groups
- Life drawing classes
- Guided tours with emphasis on art and medicine in local museums
Track Lecture Series
- 2008-9 Medical Humanities Seminars for academic and the public
- Play Performance (by students)
- Poetry and Illness
- Film and Medicine
- The Ethics of Reading
- Text Analysis and Discussion
- Making and Unmaking Gender in Literature and Film
- Narrative and History of Medicine: critical views through historiography
Experiential Opportunities
- Summer Internships
- Analysis of various programs
- Assistant at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons in Narrative Medicine Program
- Assistant at Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine
- Research on curricula and specific texts
Current Literature
- Journal: Literature and Medicine (Johns Hopkins University Press).
- The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy (Oxford University Press).
- The Yale Journal for Medicine and Humanities (on-line journal).
- The Bellevue Literary Review. ( Bellevue Literary Press).
- Charon, Rita. Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness. New York: Oxford, 2006
- Montgomery, Kathryn. "Literature, Literary Studies, and Medical Ethics: The Interdisciplinary Question". Hastings Center Report: 31.3 (2001).
- Anne Hunsaker Hawkins, Teaching Literature and Medicine (with Marilyn McIntyre). MLA Publications, 1999.
- Montgomery, Kathryn. How Doctors Think: Clinical Judgment and the Practice of Medicine. New York: Oxford UP, 2005.
*Students will receive further reading recommendations, including scholarly books and articles, fiction, and essays that are relevant to the study of medicine and humanities.
**Other educational opportunities and activities to enrich students’ experiences may be added to the curriculum during the program, per the discretion of the Track Director.