Health and Medical Humanities Minor

Health and Medical Humanities Minor

The Health and Medical Humanities (HMH) Minor will teach you how to use the skills and interpretive methods of the humanities, social sciences, and arts to consider topics related to human health and medicine through an interdisciplinary series of courses.

Fundamental to the study of the Health and Medical Humanities is the is the idea that studying history, sociology, literature, philosophy, and the arts may allow us to gain insight into aspects of life such as health, illness, disability, disease, and death—as well as the ways that medicine intervenes in our embodied lives. 

 

Why HMH?

The Health and Medical Humanities minor can enhance your coursework, your future careers, and your graduate school applications. In particular, the HMH minor will:

• allow pre-med, nursing, and public health students, as well as students in other programs related to medicine, to gain new insight into their future professions and work towards more meaningful, more effective, and more successful careers
• allow those in the humanities and social sciences to develop interdisciplinary skills to enhance their major coursework and help them envision new career paths in such fields as professional writing, non-profit fundraising, and communications
• provide a valuable credential for students applying to medical school and other graduate programs in the medical sciences, as well as students applying for graduate work in interdisciplinary fields
• provide opportunities for all HMH students to gain insight into their experiences as people who will inevitably experience their own and loved ones’ illnesses, disabilities, and medical treatment
  
  

What Will I learn?

While working towards the HMH minor, you will consider: 

• how literature allows us insight into experiences of disability, bodily suffering, and death, and how the study of narrative can enable healthcare professionals to more effectively communicate with patients
• how the history of medicine affords insight into contemporary medical practices and ethics, and can also allow medical professionals and medical patients to be more informed in imagining paths forward
• how sociology and other social sciences shed light on the relationship between social structures and healthcare access, as well as the ways that such identity factors as race, class, disability, gender, and sexuality can impact individual doctor-patient relationships, as well as systemic issues in healthcare
• how the arts can be used in therapeutic settings, and how creative expression can contribute to individual and collective wellbeing
• how philosophy can raise important questions about the nature of wellbeing, and how bioethics can raise important questions about healthcare professions, interactions, structures, and systems

Faculty Affiliates

MEET OUR COORDINATOR AND AFFILIATE FACULTY

Do you have a question about the Health and Medical Humanities minor? Click above to get the contact information for the minor coordinator.

 

Availability 

Curriculum

 

Photo Credit: Wellcome Collection.