Why study the Medical Humanities? A practical lesson in higher education for students, faculty and (even) administrators

Information

Today there is a global public and often acrimonious debate about the value of the humanities in higher education.

The value of the humanities is often overlooked by those who demand a useful rationale for its study. The new and burgeoning field of the medical humanities is seen as a pragmatic answer to this question. 

What are the medical humanities and how can they help answer the question of the value of the humanities without reducing them to a service for professional education? Sander Gilman, the author of the forthcoming Illness and Image: Case Studies in the Medical Humanities addresses the value of such approaches in contemporary education.

About 

Sander L. Gilman is a distinguished professor of the Liberal Arts and Sciences as well as Professor of Psychiatry at Emory University. A cultural and literary historian, he is the author or editor of over eighty books. 

For twenty-five years he was a member of the humanities and medical faculties at Cornell University where he held the Goldwin Smith Professorship of Humane Studies. 

For six years he held the Henry R. Luce Distinguished Service Professorship of the Liberal Arts in Human Biology at the University of Chicago and for four years was a distinguished professor of the Liberal Arts and Medicine and creator of the Humanities Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago.  

Further information

Read here for more information on our Medical Humanities Theme.

Programme

18.00 Welcome, Professor Mark Jackson

18.05  Why study the Medical Humanities? A practical lesson in higher education for students, faculty and (even) administrators
Professor Sander Gilman

18. 45 Question and Answer Session, Professor Mark Jackson

19.10 Refreshments

19.30 Close