Minor in Health Humanities
Are you interested in healthcare? Medical school? Social work? Cultural, environmental, or ethical influences on health or health disparities? Activism?
The interdisciplinary minor in health humanities equips students with humanities and arts approaches to support or understand health and wellness, both individually and in community.
Students explore historical, multicultural perspectives about health, wellness, and care within their cultural, social, and lived complexities.
The majority of health humanities classes include guest lectures or discussions with health professionals from VCU and surrounding communities. Together, we pursue big questions, about life, death, ethics, gender, suffering, desire, memory, family, inequities, nature–across time and changing cultures.
Requirements
The minor consists of 18 credits. Courses must cover a minimum of three different departments: at least one course each from English (ENGL/AMST), from History (HIST/SCTS), and from any additional department teaching in the health humanities.
- Health humanities courses also include offerings in Art Education; Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies; Kinesiology and Health Sciences; Philosophy; Sociology; Urban and Regional Studies/Planning.
- See current list of courses in the Bulletin. Check back for new courses each year! Note that several general education courses qualify for health humanities.
See a list of health humanities courses from previous semesters.
Why Health Humanities?
“If medicine were just about science, it would be easy: plug in data and get successful treatments. But medicine is practiced in partnership with patients, with their own lived experiences, strengths, challenges, traumas, successes, cultures, tragedies and joys. More fully understanding the person at the heart of the interaction allows us to better work with them to try and live healthier lives. Humanities studies allow us to better understand how to connect with the people that are the core focus of our profession.” – Mark Ryan, M.D. (VCU School of Medicine)
“Humanities enrich a health professional’s education by linking scientific practice with human experience, identities, values and needs, fostering deeper empathy, ethical awareness, and understanding of the people they serve.” – Shillpa Naavaal, B.D.S., M.S., M.P.H. (VCU School of Dentistry)
“To me, Health Humanities seeks to explain and understand the social ills of medical and health systems that aren’t easily describable or digestible. Healthcare is inherently social, but too often, people don’t realize how important it is to treat patients, practitioners and mostly everyone in the health system with respect and autonomy.” – Betty Elias (VCU undergraduate)