The growing transdisciplinary field of Health Humanities (HH) explores and promotes relationships among the arts and humanities on the one hand and health and health care on the other. The methods and substance of the arts, humanities, and humanistic social sciences have the power to transform health care for all by enhancing human connections, deepening the capacity for empathy, and improving our understanding of the cultural and social contexts in which health, illness, and care occur. At the same time, focusing on health and health care reinvigorates and reveals new relevance for humanistic scholarship and teaching in a society increasingly dominated by STEM fields.
Definition from the Humanities Institute
About this guide
This guide provides links to library resources relevant to the Health Humanities, along with instructions on how to use them. If you have questions about research in this field, please contact a librarian (see contact information to the right).
Health Humanities Reader by
Over the past forty years, the health humanities, previously called the medical humanities, has emerged as one of the most exciting fields for interdisciplinary scholarship, advancing humanistic inquiry into bioethics, human rights, health care, and the uses of technology. It has also helped inspire medical practitioners to engage in deeper reflection about the human elements of their practice. In Health Humanities Reader, editors Therese Jones, Delese Wear, and Lester D. Friedman have assembled fifty-four leading scholars, educators, artists, and clinicians to survey the rich body of work that has already emerged from the field--and to imagine fresh approaches to the health humanities in these original essays. The collection's contributors reflect the extraordinary diversity of the field, including scholars from the disciplines of disability studies, history, literature, nursing, religion, narrative medicine, philosophy, bioethics, medicine, and the social sciences. With warmth and humor, critical acumen and ethical insight, Health Humanities Reader truly humanizes the field of medicine. Its accessible language and broad scope offers something for everyone from the experienced medical professional to a reader interested in health and illness.
Routledge Handbook of the Medical Humanities by
This authoritative new handbook offers a comprehensive and cutting-edge overview of the state of the medical humanities globally, showing how clinically oriented medical humanities, the critical study of medicine as a global historical and cultural phenomenon, and medicine as a force for cultural change can inform each other. Composed of eight parts, the Routledge Handbook of the Medical Humanities looks at the medical humanities as: a network and system therapeutic provocation forms of resistance a way of reconceptualising the medical curriculum concerned with performance and narrative mediated by artists as diagnosticians of culture through public engagement. This book describes how the medical humanities can be used in and out of clinical settings, acting as a point of resistance, redistributing medicine's capital amongst its stakeholders, embracing the complexity of medical instances, shaping medical education, promoting interdisciplinary understandings and recognising an identity for the medical humanities as a network effect. This book is an essential read for all students, scholars and practitioners with an interest in the medical humanities.
Research Methods in the Health Humanities by
Research Methods in Health Humanities surveys the diverse and unique research methods used by scholars in the growing, transdisciplinary field of health humanities. Appropriate for advanced undergraduates, but rich enough to engage more seasoned students and scholars, this volume is anessential teaching and reference tool for health humanities teachers and scholars.Health humanities is a field committed to social justice and to applying expertise to real world concerns, creating research that translates to participants and communities in meaningful and useful ways. The chapters in this field-defining volume reflect these values by examining the human aspectsof health and health care that are critical, reflective, textual, contextual, qualitative, and quantitative. Divided into four sections, the volume demonstrates how to conduct research on texts, contexts, people, and programs. Readers will find research methods from traditional disciplines adaptedto health humanities work, such as close reading of diverse texts, archival research, ethnography, interviews, and surveys. The book also features transdisciplinary methods unique to the health humanities, such as health and social justice studies, digital health humanities, and community dialogues.Each chapter provides learning objectives, step-by-step instructions, resources, and exercises, with illustrations of the method provided by the authors' own research.An invaluable tool in learning, curricular development, and research design, this volume provides a grounding in the traditions of the humanities, fine arts, and social sciences for students considering health care careers, but also provides useful tools of inquiry for everyone, as we are all futurepatients and future caregivers of a loved one.
The Libraries have subject guides for many related disciplines, including:
Because Health Humanities is interdisciplinary, several librarians are available to provide research help via email or in-person consultations.
imelda.vetter@austin.utexas.edu
Health Sciences Librarian for the Dell Medical School
g.bastone@austin.utexas.edu
Humanities Librarian for English Literature and Women's & Gender Studies
ian.goodale@austin.utexas.edu
Humanities Librarian for European Studies
meryl.brodsky@austin.utexas.edu
Social Sciences Librarian for Communication & Information Science
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