Teaching Health Humanities

Teaching Health Humanities expands our understanding of the burgeoning field of health humanities and of what it aspires to be. The volume's contributors describe their different degree programs, the politics and perspectives that inform their teaching, and methods for incorporating newer digital and multimodal technologies into teaching practices.

Each chapter lays out theories that guide contributors' pedagogy, describes its application to syllabus design, and includes, at the finer level, examples of lesson plans, class exercises, and/or textual analyses. Contributions also focus on pedagogies that integrate critical race, feminist, queer, disability, class, and age studies in courses, with most essays exemplifying intersectional approaches to these axes of difference and oppression. The culminating section includes chapters on teaching with digital technology, as well as descriptions of courses that bridge bioethics and music, medical humanities and podcasts, health humanities filmmaking, and visual arts in end-of-life care.

By collecting scholars from a wide array of disciplinary specialties, professional ranks, and institutional affiliations, the volume offers a snapshot of the diverse ways medical/health humanities is practiced today and maps the diverse institutional locations where it is called upon to do work. It provides educators across diverse terrains myriad insights that will energize their teaching.

Olivia Banner is Assistant Professor of Critical Media Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas. Her scholarship and teaching, grounded in critical race, disability, and feminist studies, encompass cultural studies of digital and data cultures, with a particular focus on medicine, health, and media.

Nathan Carlin is an Associate Professor and the holder of the Samuel Karff Chair in the McGovern Center for Humanities and Ethics at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth), where he directs the Medical Humanities and Ethics Certificate Program for medical students. Dr. Carlin has published over 100 chapters, articles, book reviews, and commentaries. He also is the author or the co-author of five previous books.

Thomas R. Cole is Professor and Director of the McGovern Center for Humanities and Ethics at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston. His body of work--in books, films and articles--ranges from the cultural history of aging and humanistic gerontology to civil rights history, life story writing, and medical/health humanities. His work has been featured at the United Nations, on NPR, and at the President's Council for Bioethics.

Introduction: For Impossible Demands - Olivia Banner

Part One: Places of Pedagogy

Chapter 1 - Craig Klugman, Undergraduate Education

Chapter 2 - Nicole Piemonte and Arno Kumagai, Teaching for Humanism: Engaging Humanities to Foster Critical Dialogues in Medical Education

Chapter 3 - Jamie Shirley and Sarah Shannon, The Health Humanities in Nursing Education

Chapter 4 - Amy Haddad, Shine a Light Here, Dig Deeper Over There: Integrating the Health Humanities in Online Bioethics Education

Chapter 5 - Mindy McGarrah Sharp, Moral Imagination and More: Teaching Health Humanities in Theological Education


Part Two: Politics of Pedagogy

Chapter 6 - John Hoberman, Medical Education and the Challenge of Race

Chapter 7 - Keisha Ray, Giving Students a Contemporary Example of Medical Racism Using Black Patients' Testimonials

Chapter 8 - Lisa Diedrich, Treating Gender and Illness in the Classroom

Chapter 9 - Michael Blackie, Delese Wear, and Joseph Zarconi, Literacy Beyond the Single Story: Teaching about Class in the Health Humanities

Chapter 10 - Sayantani DasGupta, Pedagogy at the Borderlands: Why Health Humanities Needs Diaspora and Cultural Studies

Chapter 11 - Andrea Charise, Resemblance, Diversity, and Making Age Studies Matter

Chapter 12 - Rebecca Garden, Who's Teaching Whom? Disability and Deaf Studies Approaches to the Health Humanities

Chapter 13 -- David Kline, Thomas R. Cole, and Susan Pacheco, Introducing Climate Change to Medical Students: A Humanities Approach


Part Three: Novel Approaches

Chapter 14 - Kirsten Ostherr, Digital Medical Humanities and Design Thinking

Chapter 15 - Jarah Moesch, Queer Bioethics for Everyday Medical Technologies

Chapter 16 - Tess Jones, Moving Pictures: Visual Culture/Visual Activism in the Health Humanities Classroom

Chapter 17 - Marcia Brennan, The Baptism and the Butterfly: Applied Aesthetics and End of Life Care

Chapter 18 - Kearsley A. Stewart, Rachel Ingold, Maria de Bruyn and Kelley S. Swain, Art as Disruption in Global Health Humanities: The Humument Technique, a Sexual and Reproductive Health Archive, and Developing Flexible Student Thinking

Chapter 19 - Alex Lubet, Music, Music Therapy, Disability Studies, Bioethics, and Health Humanities

Chapter 20 - Nathan Carlin, Using Podcasts in Health Humanities Education