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Critical Approaches to Medical Humanities

Module description

The Medical Humanities constitute a growing field of scholarship that analyses and interprets a broad set of medical/health issues. This module introduces you to key methodological and analytical approaches humanities and social science scholars have taken to studying medicine, health and disease. Through multi- and inter-disciplinary readings and seminar discussion, you will gain a good understanding of how various humanities disciplines – and interdisciplinary clusters – interpret medical topics, and consider the relationship between this scholarship and medical practice. 

Module aims - intentions of the module

This module is designed to enhance your understanding of the main themes and approaches in the interdisciplinary study of medical humanities. It will enable you to think critically about key methods and techniques used by humanities and social science researchers to analyse and interpret issues of health, medicine and disease in their historical and cultural contexts. It will give you the skills necessary to review scholarly books and articles in medical humanities, and to produce critical writing assessing key themes, approaches and methods. You will have the opportunity to consider the differences between medical humanities and medical science, and whether medical humanities scholarship can make a contribution to health care. 

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Understand and evaluate the main themes and approaches in the study of medical humanities
• 2. Possess detailed knowledge of the key historiographical and theoretical debates informing the study of medical humanities
• 3. Assess critically the role of primary sources in informing the study of medical humanities

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 4. Demonstrate the ability to analyse and synthesise different types of historical material and evidence
• 5. Demonstrate a critical understanding of key historical concepts and debates, and recognise the differences between different approaches and source types
• 6. Develop practical research skills in the primary and secondary evidence

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 7. Demonstrate capacity for independent critical research, study and thought, including developing the ability to construct and defend a sustained argument, both in written form and orally, using primary and secondary materials
• 8. Work as an individual and with a tutor and peers in an independent, constructive and responsive way
• 9. Apply key bibliographical skills to independent study

Syllabus plan

Each seminar will explore some of the various approaches humanities scholars have taken to a specific medical topic. These topics will vary each year depending on staff expertise and student choice. Over the course of one term, potential approaches explored in seminars include:

• Medical anthropology
• Ethnography and oral history
• Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK)
• Science and Technology Studies (STS)
• Literature and Medicine
• Art and art history
• Drama
• Theology
• Philosophy
• Medical Ethics
• Law
• Psychiatry
• Visual and material culture
• Film
• Narrative medicine

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 50%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of referral will be capped at 50%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• Victoria Bates, Alan Bleakley and Sam Goodman (eds), Medicine, Health and the Arts: Approaches to the Medical Humanities (London, Routledge, 2012).
• M. Evans, R. Ahlzen, I Heath, I & J. Macnaughton,  Medical Humanities Companion Vol. 1: Symptom  (Oxford: Radcliffe, 2009).
• Rolf Ahlén, Martyn Evans, Pekka Louhiala and Raimo Puustinen (eds.), Medical Humanities Companion Volume Two: Diagnosis (Oxford: Radcliffe, 2008).
• Donna Haraway, ‘The Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century,’ inSimians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature  (New York; Routledge, 1991).
• Charles Bosk, What Would You Do? Juggling Bioethics and Ethnography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).
• Kaushik Sunder Rajan, Biocapital: The Constitution of Postgenomic Life (Durham: Duke UP, 2006).
• Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 3 Vols. (1976).
• Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (University of Chicago Press, 1962).
• Bruno Latour & Steve Woolgar, Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1986).
• William F. Bynum & Roy Porter (eds), Companion Encyclopedia to the History of Medicine, 2 vols. (London: Routledge, 1993).
• Sergio Sismondo, An Introduction to Science and Technology Studies (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004).
• James A Secord, ‘Knowledge in transit’, Isis, Vol. 95 (2004), pp. 654-672.
• Steven Shapin, ‘History of Science and its Sociological Reconstructions’, History of Science, Vol. 20 (1982), pp. 157-211.
• Ludmilla Jordanova, ‘The Social Construction of Medical Knowledge’, Social History of Medicine, Vol. 8 (1995), pp. 361-381.
• D.M. Fox and C. Lawrence, Photographing Medicine  (1988).
• Ulf Schmidt & Andreas Frewer, History and Theory of Human Experimentation. The Declaration of Helsinki and Modern Medical Ethics (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2007).
• Ana Carden-Coyne, Reconstructing the Body: Classicism and Modernism (OUP Global, 2009).
• James Marcum, An Introductory Philosophy of Medicine: Humanizing Modern Medicine (New York: Springer, 2008).
• Charles Foster, Choosing Life, Choosing Death: The Tyranny of Autonomy in Medical Ethics and Law (Oxford; Portland: Hart, 2009).
• Arthur Klienman, The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing and the Human Condition (New York: Basic Books, 1988).
• Howard Brody, Stories of Sickness (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
• Havi Carel, Illness: the Art of Living (Durham: Acumen, 2008).
• Arthur W. Frank, The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness and Ethics (Chicago: Chicago UP, 1995).
• John MacGregor, The Discovery of the Art of the Insane (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989).
• Corrine Saunders, Ulrika Maude and Jane MacNaughton (eds.) The Body and the Arts (Basingstoke Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

• ELE – https://vle.exeter.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=11369 
• Wellcome Images:  http://wellcomeimages.org/
• Wellcome Collection: https://wellcomecollection.org/
• Wellcome Library: http://wellcomelibrary.org/
• National Library of Medicine (US): https://www.nlm.nih.gov/
• PubMed: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/
• The NYU Literature, Arts and Medicine Blog: http://medhum.med.nyu.edu/blog/  
• The Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database, New York University, School of Medicine: http://litmed.med.nyu.edu