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 consists of the following courses*:

COMM 410Health Communications

3

HUM 410The Humanities in Medicine

3

MHUM 189Core Seminar in Medical Humanities

3

MHUM 375Special Topics in Medical Humanities

1

MHUM 401Illness, Health & Narrative

3

MHUM 472Special Topics in Medical Humanities

3

PHIL 410Phenomenology and Embodiment

3

PHIL 412Biomedical Ethics

3

SOC 415Human Sexuality

3

THEA 310Acting for Healthcare Sciences

3

Total Credit Hours:15
*From the following courses, at least 12 credit hours must be at the 300 level or above.