Roundtable: New Directions in the Medical Humanities

The interdisciplinary field of the medical humanities first emerged in the late 20th century as a way of drawing on the creative and intellectual strengths of humanistic disciplines such as art, feminist and queer theory, literature, and philosophy to augment the theory and practice of medicine, disrupting the historical silos of academic knowledge in order to rethink patient experience, culture, and clinical ethics. The humanities and the medical sciences have come to be recognized as inextricably linked due to the ways in which scientific knowledge production, including frameworks of “health” and “illness,” are always filtered through a cultural lens. Today, the field is changing and expanding, theoretically, methodologically, and thematically, to adapt to our new global and technological milieu.

The College of Arts and Humanities' new research and curricular initiatives in the medical humanities presents a round table panel of four faculty who will discuss the emergence and growth of the field from multiple (inter)disciplinary perspectives. Central questions include:

• How are the humanities enriched when skills forged in the hard sciences are drawn upon to reorganize knowledge and place it in the service of both local and global problem-solving?
• By de-centering the foundational ideas of Western medicine, how can we interpret and make use of the ways other medical traditions, including indigenous and folk practices, overlap, inform one another, and become hybridized?

Panelists include:

• Andrew Schonebaum, School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures/ Chinese
• Chantel Rodriguez, Department of History
• GerShun Avilez, Department of English
• Jessica Lee Mathiason, Women’s Studies Department
• Mehl Penrose, School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures/ Spanish (Moderator)