Students who study the humanities alongside the sciences develop critical and analytical skills, research expertise, intellectual and cultural community, and balance in their academic careers.

The Medical Humanities Initiative offers a minor in Medical Humanities, Culture, and Society. The minor comes at an opportune time for Georgetown and our greater DC community and brings together traditional strengths of our institution: health education and research and scholarship and teaching in the humanities and social sciences.

The minor is open without application to students across the College of Arts and Sciences, SFS, SOH, SON, and MSB. It is also open (with instructor permission) to graduate and medical student auditors. The minor may be of especial interest to health professions, graduate and medical students, and humanities and social-sciences oriented students drawn to interdisciplinary areas such as history of medicine, science and technology studies, narrative medicine, public health, medical anthropology, sociology, and ethics.

Requirements for the Minor

The interdisciplinary minor in Medical Humanities, Culture, and Society requires six total courses (three core courses and three electives), and is designed to provide students with a firm foundation in the field. Up to 3 credits can be fulfilled by 1-credit courses.

Course Offerings

Core Courses

• MHUM-1101: Introduction to Medical Humanities
• MHUM-2202: Methods in Medical Humanities
• MHUM-4960: Senior Capstone Seminar in Medical Humanities

Elective Courses

Students will be able to use courses from other programs and departments to satisfy the minor’s elective requirements; this list grows each semester, and we will continue to add to it.

• ANTH-2250: Intro to Medical Anthology
• ANTH-2256: Disability & Culture
• BIOL-2104: Global History of the Plague / HIST-4104: Global History of the Plague
• BIOL-2600: Select Agents: Biology and Security
• BIOL-2670: Global Health History
• CULP-2260: Performance & Narratives of Pandemic Culture & Politics
• FREN-4773: Maladies/Miracle Cures in 19th Century France
• HEST-3355: Health Equity Think Tank
• HIST-4104: Global History of Plague / BIOL-269: Global History of Plague
• IDST-2109: Health Inequities in the Time of COVID
• IDST-2120: Disability Justice at GU
• IDST-2121: Ethics: Research with Human Subjects
• MHUM-1004: Death in America
• MHUM-1005: Medicine, Law, Ethics & End of Life
• MHUM-1007: The Problem of Suffering / IDST-2122: The Problem of Suffering
• MHUM-1008: Ethics of Research with Human Subjects
• MHUM-1103: Literature and Medicine
• MHUM-1110: War, Death, and Remembrance
• MHUM-1111: Public Health Ethics / PHIL-2004: Public Health Ethics
• MHUM-1112: Clinical Ethics / PHIL-2005: Clinical Ethics
• MHUM-1130: End of Life Ethics
• MHUM-2220: Pediatric Ethics
• MHUM-2250: War, Medicine, & Care in the 20th and 21st Centuries
• MHUM-2275: Medicine and the Muse
• MHUM-3302: Death in America
• MHUM-3310: Literature of AIDS & Epidemics
• MHUM-4450: Aging and Ageism
• PHIL-2001: Bioethics
• PHIL-8301: Theories of Medical Ethics
• PSYC-2228: Social Psychology / PSYC-2400: Social Psychology
• SOCI-3709: Sociology of Health/Illness
• STIA-3257: Global Health Foundations
• STIA-4969: Mind, Madness, Meditation
• WGST-2239: Medicine, Race & Gender

The course list is not meant to be exhaustive. If students identify other courses that provide significant opportunities to engage with the medical humanities, they should present them to the Director for approval.