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.