Medical Humanities Minor

Medical Humanities is a burgeoning interdisciplinary field that brings the insights and discoveries of the humanities, the arts, and the social sciences to bear on the practice of medicine. A minor in this field will serve JU's significant population of students interested in pursuing professions in the health care industry. Medicine by its very nature must connect the knowledge, research, and expertise of the sciences to the realm of the human. Medical practitioners can improve their practice by learning to engage critically with a patient's individual story, by confronting their own biases and preconceptions about different cultural understandings of medicine and the body, and by weighing in on the moral and ethical issues that surround medical practice (Hawkins and McEntyre, 2000). The humanities, the social sciences, and the arts offer students an important opportunity to consider the real world and implications of scientific principles scaled to the human. In this way, the medical humanities minor serves as a perfect complement to pre-health majors. In addition, experiences with illness, mortality, disability, and bioethics affect all of us. Students curious about these most fundamental of human experiences are also encouraged to add this minor.

Minor Requirements

A Medical Humanities minor requires a minimum of 15 credit hours selected from the following courses, of which at least 12 hours must be at the 300 level or above:

COMM 410

3

ENGL 411

3

HUM 410

3

MHUM 189

3

MHUM 375

3

MHUM 401

3

MHUM 472

3

PHIL 410

3

PHIL 412Biomedical Ethics

3

SOC 415Human Sexuality

3

THEA 310Acting Healthcare Sciences

3