Why Study Medical Humanities?
The Medical Humanities program investigates the human experience of health and illness. The Medical Humanities is an interdisciplinary field, one that lies at the intersection of the social sciences, the humanities, the arts, the biomedical sciences and the caregiving disciplines.
Majors examine fundamental and far-ranging questions about health and illness, from personal health struggles to global medical systems. Through interactions with faculty members from colleges and schools across the university, they learn how different social contexts, belief systems, historical traditions and literary works shape our perspectives on disease and the healing arts. Majors explore such diverse subjects as the ethics of care, patient advocacy, body image, narrative medicine, disabilities rights, medical racism, reproductive autonomy, genetic counseling, arts-based therapies, public health, health policy and the nature of death and dying.
