ARTS40330: Concepts and Frameworks in the Critical Medical Humanities

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• To provide students with advanced training in the interdisciplinary field of critical medical humanities, honing their understanding of its development and divergence from first-wave medical humanities, its distinctive contribution to health research and its current challenges
• To develop in students a strong foundation in concepts, theories, and approaches essential to research in the critical medical humanities

• This module will give students a comprehensive introduction to the critical medical humanities, identifying the factors that gave rise to its development and distinction from first-wave medical humanities, the fields key conceptual frameworks, values, and commitment to working across disciplines and sectors, and with communities with lived experience. It does so in order to demonstrate the value of interdisciplinary approaches from across the humanities and social sciences to addressing how health, and knowledge about health, is produced at multiple sites and scales, now and in the past. The module will bring different disciplinary perspectives to bear on key concepts within the field such as embodiment, data, evidence, symptom, inequalities, measurement, narrative, voice and identity. Particular attention will be given to the sites, spaces and places in which health is constituted and contested. The module will include perspectives from a range of academic researchers including from English Studies, Philosophy, Modern Languages and Cultures, Anthropology, Sociology, Geography, Law, and Theology and Religion as well as clinical practitioners and individuals with lived experience.

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• Understand the history, relevance and challenges of the field of critical medical humanities
• Understand and apply advanced conceptual frameworks covered in the module to interpret specific challenges in health-related research
• Situate debates about health, illness and medicine within broader debates about wider social, political and economic processes

Subject-specific Skills:

• Articulate an advanced knowledge and understanding of a range of conceptual and theoretical approaches in the critical medical humanities
• Examine key concepts within health research from multiple disciplinary perspectives
• Identify the ways in which different disciplinary perspectives are drawn together in interdisciplinary approaches to health research
• Apply their knowledge of key concepts within critical medical humanities to contemporary health-related problems or issues
• Creatively synthesise material from a wide range of sources in order to produce effective written and/or mixed media outputs
• Communicate their understanding to diverse audiences in ways which are creative and context-appropriate

Key Skills:

• On completion of this module, students will possess:
• An advanced ability to engage critically with health research from a variety of disciplinary perspectives
• Sophisticated skills in critical reasoning with an advanced ability to handle information and argument critically and creatively
• Advanced communication skills suitable for presenting complex issues to diverse academic and non-specialist audiences
• An advanced ability to engage creatively and collaboratively with students of disparate backgrounds across the cohort
• The ability to engage in disciplined reflection upon the nature of their experiences, and the capacity to improve own learning and performance through independent learning and peer feedback
• The ability to plan work effectively, with appropriate time-management skills

• This module will be delivered online by the Department of English Studies. It will be team taught by staff from the Departments contributing to the Medical Humanities MA. Most learning will be asynchronous. Each week, students will be able to access a series of short (15 minute lectures) addressing that weeks topic, linked together by reflective exercises to support their engagement with the material. Students will also have three in-person meetings with their tutor or supervisor and be supported to form independently convened study groups with other students. The module will be assessed through an annotated bibliography (20%), research essay (30%) and student devised assessment (50%). Each of these summative assignments incorporates formative elements and is designed to be completed progressively, incorporating tutor feedback. The format of the student devised assessment will be agreed in advance with the module convenor and could be a written output (essay, report, blog, website), a presentation or other mixed-media recording. To support students in taking full advantage of the creative possibilities afforded by devising their own assessment format, examples of successful projects from other contexts will be shared and additional marking criteria supplied.

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