Health and Medical Humanities

Through focused exploration of moments in human experience of health, care, illness, wellness, disability, healing, and medicine, students will begin to understand ways in which social, cultural, psychological, aesthetic, and professional differences affect illness and access to treatment, historically and in the present time. Designed to introduce students to the learning outcomes of the Health and Medical Humanities minor, this course utilizes a case study approach rooted in the discipline of the faculty member instructing the course.

This course explores how Americans understand death and burial practices over time, particularly comparing the pre-Civil War antebellum period to the Beautification of Death Movement of the late 19th/early twentieth century in a Dubuque context. As part of the course, students explore the narratives people compose to understand death and how those narratives change over time. It particularly explores how human understanding of death and the sacred spaces associated with it change in response to a range of social, cultural, technological, intellectual, and economic factors.

Because illness, physical and mental suffering, scientific endeavors, and the concept of “health” and “(Dis)ease” can have such powerful and disturbing effects, literary works depicting them offer unique insights into human experience. This course introduces students both to the status and role of literature as it engages with medical, scientific, and technological concepts and to the concept of writing on and through the body. In this course, students will consider the principles and concepts that form the basis of knowledge in humanities and develop awareness of the contexts (historical, social, ethical, and disciplinary) in which literature and science (e)merge. They will read, discuss, and write about a selection of literary works that depict conditions like cancer, tuberculosis, post-partum depression, asthma, blindness, OCD, anxiety, plague, and death/fear of death; explore the symbolic and allegorical meanings that have come to be associated with them; and consider the roles and responsibilities of physicians and caregivers charged with treating patients with these conditions. Students will read multiple genres, including personal narrative, the short story, Science Fiction, and Dystopian literature.