Medical and Health Humanities (Taught)

Our MA Medical and Health Humanities offers you the chance to explore human health through the richly faceted lenses of culture and history, covering topics including infectious disease, diet and exercise, disability, and mental health and wellbeing.

Why choose this course?

• This course draws together the diverse experience and interests of students and staff, working across different disciplines, different historical periods and different geographical regions, to offer an interdisciplinary approach to the fascinating, complex relationship between medicine and the humanities.

• It is ideal if you are interested in, or working within, health studies and wish to deepen your understanding of how patients and practitioners interact and how these narratives are negotiated in contemporary culture, theory and artistic practice.

• It gives you the chance to consider further how scientific and technological advances are constantly pushing the bounds of medical possibility. You will explore the role played by the humanities, and how the practice of medicine represented in art, literature, film and other media determines how we understand and experience our own bodies and the realities of sickness and health.

What you will learn

On this MA Medical and Health Humanities you will explore the timely and urgent matters facing people, patients, stakeholders, practitioners and artists as they address issues including identity, gender, sexuality, autonomy, rights, equality and diversity in the broad field of medicine.

You will also consider the development of clinical practices and institutions, the formation of medical expertise and authority, and the role of medical ethics and law.

How you will learn

This course is available to study full- or part-time with classes taking place in the evening. You will learn on this course through lectures, seminars and workshops. You will also engage with a range of materials from academic criticism to narratives of lived experience and explore archives and a diversity of literary and artistic works.

The core module examines key themes between medicine and culture and uses them to build a sense of the canonical issues, discourses and methods of the medical humanities. You will explore topics like the birth of the clinic, genetics and ethics, disability studies, assisted reproduction and reproductive loss, narrative medicine, and memoir and lived experience. You will then choose three additional modules to complement your own unique learning journey.

Highlights

• The course has been awarded a number of fully funded MA studentships by the Wellcome Trust as part of its commitment to building an influential and diverse population of future researchers in the medical humanities.

• All Master’s students are eligible to apply for our prestigious Eric Hobsbawm Scholarships. We also offer a number of bursaries.

• This course grows out of Birkbeck’s Centre for Medical and Health Humanities which brings together academics and students to work on issues both critical and clinical. We host visiting speakers, give talks, run a regular reading group, and provide a hub for the College’s diverse research in the field.

Careers and employability

On successfully graduating from this MA Medical and Health Humanities, you will have gained an array of important transferable skills, including:

• a sophisticated use of written and spoken English

• an advanced critical ability in the use of theoretical perspectives

• facility and precision in the use of analytical tools

• strong skills and initiative in collecting and organising complex materials and writing up clear, well-presented reports or fluent critical arguments.

Graduates can pursue career paths in a wide range of different fields. including in:

• medicine

• academia

• research

• publishing

• journalism

• healthcare education or administration

• community health

• education

• law.