Concentration in Medical Humanities
Concentration Director
Michael P. Steinberg
Director, Cogut Center for the Humanities
Barnaby Conrad and Mary Critchfield Keeney Professor of History
Brown University
194 Meeting Street
Box 1983
Providence, Rhode Island 02912
Phone: (401) 863-6074
Email: Michael_Steinberg@brown.edu
Overview
Medicine is perhaps the most humane art and science. Its tasks of caring and healing focus first on the body but its goals of individual and collective well-being affect all aspects of physical, mental, and social life. The legacy and character of medical education at Brown University have consistently honored this principle by way of a unique integration of the medical curriculum into the curricula of the university at large. In this way, medicine connects with the humanistic charge of the university itself and with the disciplines and programs, old and new, through which human experience is understood and improved.
The concentration in Medical Humanities seeks to build on these connections. The humanities are engaged principally in the study of human experience, human understanding and self-understanding. Over time, humanistic disciplines have developed in conjunction with the components of human understanding and representation. These aspects-language, image, movement, sound, as well as the political and social modes of their distribution-at once involve and transcend the body.
As a new program of Brown University, charged with encouraging collaboration and growth in the humanities, the Cogut Center for the Humanities is pleased to act as sponsor and principal convener of the Medical Humanities concentration. The resources, programs, and networks of the Cogut Center will be made available to the concentration with the goal of encouraging widespread participation on the part of Brown faculty and students.
Curriculum
The Medical Humanities curriculum seeks the participation of students in all four years of the medical curriculum. In the first year, students will be invited to formulate individual summer research projects on a topic related to the humanities and humanistic research, under the supervision of an appropriate mentor.
The concentration's "flagship" component will be the second-year seminar. This annual, two-semester seminar will be organized around a theme or problem that directly combines medical and humanistic concerns. It will be convened by a Brown faculty member with direct links with the Cogut Center.
The second year seminar will begin with a student presentation on the previous summer's work and its relation to the developing concentration and its focus. By the end of the first semester, each student will submit a written proposal of an independent research or analytical/critical project. Seminar meetings in the spring semester will conclude with an oral and written presentation of this material. This presentation will include a description of ongoing work, for years 3 and 4. The material will be submitted to fellows concentrators as well as to the seminar leader, concentration mentor (if different from the seminar leader), and other faculty members serving in an advisory capacity. This same group will function as a review committee for the fourth-year project.
In the third and fourth years, students in the concentration will develop and pursue an independent scholarly project, culminating in a publishable article, presentation, or otherwise publicly available body of original work. They will be invited to take advantage of all aspects of the Cogut Center's developing programs and resources, including visiting lecture series, conferences, and the exhibition, installation, and interactive possibilities of the Humanities Lab, a component of the new facility in Pembroke Hall, to be dedicated in the fall of 2008.
Learning Objectives
The Medical Humanities concentration will give medical students opportunities to think rigorously about topics associated with humanistic disciplines as well as newer, interdisciplinary studies. These include language, culture, communication, politics, and gender, among many others. All of them impact on the constitution, experience, and treatment of the body. These objectives, taken individually or in any number of combinations, will individualized to the interests of each student.
Project Examples
2009 Accepted Students & Scholarly Concentration Projects:
| Student | Project Title | Mentor |
| Grossman, Joseph | The Role of Broca’s Area in the Resolution of Competition: An fMRI Investigation | Sheila Blumstein, PhD |
Maximum Number of Students
There is currently no maximum number of students that can participate in the concentration.
Faculty Mentors
- Sherine Hamdy and Daniel Smith, Anthropology
- Carol Poore, German Studies
- Arnold Weinstein, Comparative Literature
Funding Opportunities
(alternatives to Summer Assistantships)
There are currently no identified funding sources beyond the traditional Summer Assistantships.