What is Medical Humanities?
Medical Humanities is a dynamic, interdisciplinary field that re-centers health within its broader social, cultural, and historical contexts. Drawing from diverse disciplines—humanities, social sciences, and visual and performing arts—this field continues to gain prominence on both liberal arts and health campuses.
The Georgetown Medical Humanities Initiative is a cross-campus collaboration between Georgetown College of Arts and Sciences and Georgetown University Medical Center. Under the direction of Dr. Lakshmi Krishnan, who holds faculty positions in both Medicine and English, our initiative embodies Georgetown University’s core educational mission and Jesuit values of cura personalis. We recognize that health practitioners cannot truly treat “the whole patient” without valuing their humanity in all its dimensions.
Medical Humanities offers interdisciplinary courses across multiple programs: undergraduate, graduate, and medical education, including a dedicated component within the GUSOM Journeys curriculum during the second year. We offer a minor in the College of Arts and Sciences, where students engage with invested Georgetown faculty and the greater DC community to deepen their understanding of health through humanities and social sciences perspectives. Our initiative sponsors research mentorships and fellowships for students at all levels, and hosts events across campus and throughout DC in partnership with the Georgetown Howard Center for Medical Humanities and Health Justice.
A unique strength of our program is its collaborative breadth, engaging faculty, students, and clinical trainees across both the medical center and arts and sciences campus. This creates rich opportunities for creative, cutting-edge teaching, research, and collaboration.
The Medical Humanities Minor
Our initiative offers a minor in Medical Humanities, Culture, and Society. The minor requires 18 total credits, including core courses in Introduction to Medical Humanities and a Senior Capstone in Medical Humanities and electives from disciplines such as history, literature, philosophy, anthropology, science and technology studies, and psychology. Students pursuing this minor work closely with dedicated Georgetown faculty and connect with the greater DC community to deepen their engagement with health education, research, and scholarship in the humanities and social sciences.
To learn more about educational opportunities at Georgetown, please visit our Education page.
