Medical Humanities Track

MEDICAL HUMANITIES IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT PATHWAY

THE MEDICAL HUMANITIES in a Global Context Pathway (MHGCP) within the Judy Genshaft Honors College has blossomed since its inception two years ago. Through a collection of thematically linked courses, students can navigate the Honors curriculum using the medical humanities as a guiding topic of connection. Students who are pursuing degrees in biomedical and health sciences (nearly a third of the Judy Genshaft Honors College student body) have the opportunity through this pathway to situate their professional ambitions within a wider understanding of human well-being. Similarly, students in the humanities have found an intellectual community in which to cultivate an understanding of human well-being within the context of contemporary medical practices.

The Medical Humanities is a young and dynamic interdisciplinary field of collaboration between researchers and practitioners from a wide variety of disciplinary and professional perspectives. The gravitational draw that has energized the emergence of this field is a wide-spread recognition that human health and well-being must center on the person. As the range of disciplines devoted to understanding the way that human beings interpret their world expands, medicine needs the resources of the humanities to achieve its goal of fostering human health and well-being.

Thanks to the support of a three-year $90,000 Humanities Connections Implementation Grant from the National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH), Honors students can select from more than 30 sections of MHGCP classes each year. This repertoire has included courses such as:

• Acquisition of Knowledge: Interdisciplinary Inquiry,

Practical Wisdom, & Human Flourishing • Narrative Medicine: Reclaiming the Stories of Patients from the Institutions of Medicine • Arts and Health at the Ringling Museum of Art • Experience Japan - from Hospitals to Hospitality (Omotenashi) • How Microbes and People Get Along • Fertility and the Future • Global Health with People First • Health, Illness, and Society • The Compassionate City: A Social Autopsy • Biomedical Ethics • Ethics in Medical Research • Physicians of the Soul: Medicine, Philosophy, and the Good Life • Beasts and Burdens: Survival, Imagination, and the

Politics of Risk in the (Global) South • Health and History • Health Hermeneutics: Global Perspectives on

Environments & Cultures of Well-being • Connections: Mental Healthcare, Community Engagement, and Art • Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice • Perspectives in Performing Arts Healthcare • Spatial Effects: Places for Healing and Wellbeing

In addition to these, the global focus of this pathway is amplified with a rich selection of study abroad courses including:

• Spring Semester in Exeter, UK: Flourishing: Cultivating,

Persons, Cultures, & Environments of Well-being (taught in collaboration with the Wellcome Center for Cultures and

Environments of Health at the University of Exeter) • Summer in London, UK: Physicians of the Soul: Medicine,

Philosophy, and the Good Life; Benjamin Scott Young,

Ph.D [IDH 3600] • Summer in Dominican Republic: Global Health Internship • Winter in Dominican Republic: DR Honors Service Trip • Summer in Florence, Italy: The Italian Healthcare System and Physician Observation

Students have also taken the initiative to form an Honors Health Humanities Circle (3HC) for Honors students interested in understanding and cultivating human well-being. Led by founding student President Sierra Shellabarger, Vice President Aiden Jaskolka-Brown, and Communications Director Aditi Parashar, the organization will host regular public lectures, panel discussions, and student undergraduate research presentations beginning in Spring 2022. In collaboration with Dr. Benjamin Scott Young, their next project will be to develop a medical humanities undergraduate research workshop aimed at supporting student projects from inception to dissemination.

- Dr. Benjamin Young

ACADEMICS

Honors students and faculty gather for a meeting of the Health Humanities Circle, a student-led organization inspired by the Medical Humanities in a Global Context Pathway in the Judy Genshaft Honors College.