Electives - Humanities in Medicine

Images of Medicine in Film, Literature, and the Visual Arts

Elective Number: (Oasis E18i) 3508

Course Supervisor: Dr. Hunter Groninger

Designated Signer: Dr. Marcia Childress, 5361 Barringer

Evaluation should be given to: Dr. Groninger

Available: Rotation 10 - Class of 2008; 11 - Class of 2009

Time to Report: 9:00 am

Place to Report: Center for Biomedical Ethics and Humanities Office, Barringer 5

Attendance: Attendance at elective activities is mandatory.

• Anyone who is ill or has a personal or family emergency must contact Student Affairs and the Attending on Service.
• Students are allowed to take off up to 1 day per week to interview between November 1 and February 1.
  • Specific days missed must be approved by the Attending on Service.

Number of students per rotation: Minimum of 4, Maximum of 8 - Class of 2008; Minimum of 4, Maximum of 10 - Class of 2009

Course Description: This course explores how images of medicine in film, theatrical drama and fiction (and occasionally other visual arts) reflect cultural attitudes, meanings and values. Some of these involve how medicine is both trusted and mistrusted and how it is understood or misconstrued both in its own cultural contexts and in different cultural settings it may serve. Attention is given to images of physicians and caregivers, images of patients and the ways they may be perceived, and images of how medicine and illness are in turn seen by others.

"Seeing" here may connote perceiving, imagining, assuming, understanding, criticizing, and valuing. Many of the assigned films, plays, and narratives explicitly concern medical stories, but some are less about medicine than about the social, interpersonal, and ethical "worlds" of patients and caregivers—where "world" is a metaphor for complex spheres of value and structures of action, meaning, and emotion.

After taking this course, students should be better able to examine critically the purposes or core values of many worlds of medicine, including "to care" (in what contexts of care?), "to cure" (what is a cure, and when is it appropriate or inappropriate?), "to help make meaning" (particularly where illness shatters life-stories?), and "to heal or change or transform" (oneself? one's society?).

The course meets in twelve seminars of at least two hours each. Films, plays, and narratives are the primary assignments accompanied by secondary readings and bibliography. Participants need access to video playback equipment; most assigned texts are available in the video (VHS and DVD) and literature library of the Center for Humanism in Medicine. To help facilitate discussion, students prepare short written reactions or commentaries on the primary assignments. Each student undertakes a final project (a paper or chronicle, a work of narrative or visual art, a film or video or photographic exhibit, etc.) that reflects on medicine and the imagination. Students also attend Medical Center Hour.

This description is a general overview. The instructor will establish the schedule and particular requirements at the time of the course.