Medical Humanities Research Group

Medical Humanities encompasses disciplines within the arts, humanities, medicine, and social sciences. Its goal is to give students and scholars an opportunity to explore a more holistic and meaning-centered perspective on medical issues. It generally emphasizes the subjective experience of health and illness as captured through the expressive arts (for example, painting, music, film, or literature), expressed across historical periods and in different cultures, and interpreted by humanistic scholars in the humanities and social sciences. It draws attention not only to diagnosis, but to the meaning and experience of diagnosis, to the way that medicine is an art form as well as a science, to the way institutions and culture across the globe shape the way illness is identified, experienced and treated. Its concerns range from the existential and artistic to the political and policy oriented.