Medical Humanities Minor Requirements

Beyond Boundaries Program

The Medical Humanities minor approaches health, disease and medical care as culturally embedded human experiences that vary across time and place. It draws on existing courses from across Arts and Sciences and includes a Beyond Boundaries inter-school course for first-years called “The Art of Medicine.”

Learn about Beyond Boundaries

Declare a Medical Humanities Minor

The Medical Humanities minor may be declared in WebSTAC beginning in the spring semester of the student’s first year, or any time thereafter. Potential Medical Humanities minors should have taken (or be at the end of the semester in) at least one core Medical Humanities course. Once students declare the minor in WebSTAC, they will receive an Intake Form from Hannah Ryan via email. Completion of the form is required to be approved for the minor.

Declare the minor

Minor Requirements

Units required: 18

The Medical Humanities minor may be declared in WebSTAC as early as the spring semester of a student’s freshman year.

Freshman Courses

  • The Art of Medicine [freshmen only]
  • First-Year Seminar: Stories of Medicine* [freshmen only]
     

Course Requirements

Students are required to take 5 core courses. At least 9 units must be taken at the 300 level or above. Students are advised to take courses from at least 2 out of the 7 different disciplinary categories: Classics & Art History (CAH); History (HIS), Medicine, Race, and Ethnicity (MRE); Languages/Literature/Culture (LLC); Performing Arts & Music (PAM); Philosophy & Religious Studies (PHR); and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS). Core courses may also require additional prerequisites within their home departments or programs. Students can take up to 3 units (usually one class) of a designated affiliate course in a social-science or natural-science discipline. All courses must be taken for grade to count for the minor. 

Core Courses: 

Include but are not limited to. Check WUCRSL for active listings.

  • Advanced Medical French (LLC)
  • The AIDS Epidemic: Inequalities, Ethnography, and Ethics (WGSS, MRE)
  • Ancient Greek and Roman Gynecology (CAH)
  • Ancient Greek and Roman Medicine (CAH)
  • Ancient Madness (CAH)
  • Art and the Mind-Brain (PHR)
  • The Art of Health in Nice [French language prerequisites] (LLC)
  • Biomedical Ethics (MRE)
  • Contemporary Women’s Health/Gender and Health (WGSS)
  • Current Topics in the History of Medicine (HIS)
  • Disability Studies Before “Disability” [Topics in French Literature] [French language prerequisites] (LLC)
  • Disease, Madness and Death Italian-Style (LLC)
  • Freshman Seminar: Global Health in the Francophone World (LLC/MRE)
  • From Hysteria to Hysterectomy: Women's Health Care in America (WGSS)
  • Galen's "On Prognosis": A Social History of Medicine in Second-Century Rome (LLC)
  • Gender, Religion, Medicine, & Science (WGSS)
  • Health and Disease in World History (HIS)
  • Healing and Social Justice (WGSS)
  • Historical Methods-European History (HIS)
  • Historical Racial Violence: Legacies & Reckonings (MRE)
  • History of the Body [Advanced Seminar] (HIS)
  • Humors, Pox, and Plague: Medieval and Early Modern Medicine (HIS)
  • Literature and Medicine (LLC)
  • Making Sex and Gender: Understanding the History of the Body (HIS)
  • Mad: Mental Illness, Power and Resistance in Africa and the Caribbean [Advanced Seminar]  (MRE)
  • Mamma Mia!: Motherhood, Maternity, and the Female Reproductive Body in the Italian Cultural Context (LLC) 
  • Medical Narratives, Narrative Medicine [French language prerequisites] (LLC)
  • Medical French [French language prerequisites] (LLC)
  • Medical Spanish [Spanish language prerequisites] (LLC)
  • Medicine, Healing and Experimentation in the Contours of Black History (HIS/MRE)
  • Medicine, Disease, and Empire [Advanced Seminar] (HIS/MRE)
  • Nature, Technology, and Medicine in Korea (LLC)
  • Philosophy of Medicine (PHR)
  • Presence in Performance: Alexander Technique and Mindful Movement for Performing Artists (PAM)
  • Religion, Health, and Wellness in Modern America (PHR)
  • Religion & Healing (PHR)
  • Mental Health and Mental Illness: Philosophical Questions [PNP Seminar] (PHR)
  • Sex in Italian Culture and Media (LLC)
  • Staging Illness (PAM)
  • The Racial and Sexual Politics of Public Health (MRE, WGSS)
  • Thinking-It-Through: Transplants [French language prerequisites] (LLC)
  • Bodies in Pain: Disability and Illness in the Nineteenth Century (LLC)
  • Trans Studies (WGSS)
  • What Is Medical Humanities? (can count for any disciplinary category)
  • Women and Crime in the Evolution of American History (HIS/MRE)
  • Women, Health and Media (WGSS)
  • Writing and Medicine (LLC)
     

Affiliate Courses:

Include but are not limited to. Check WUCRSL for active listings.

  • Anthropological Perspectives on the Fetus
  • Adventures in Nosology: The Nature and Meaning of Disease
  • Culture, Illness, and Healing in Asia
  • Cultures of Health in Latin America
  • Disability, Quality of Life & Community Responsibility 
  • The Female Life-Cycle in Cross-Cultural Perspective
  • Gender, Culture and Madness
  • Global Health and Language
  • Health, Healing and Ethics: Introduction to Medical Anthropology
  • Inequality by Design: Understanding Racial & Ethnic Health Disparities in the United States
  • Introduction to Global Health
  • Living, Dying and Death: A Biopsychosocial Approach to Understanding the End of Life
  • Sick Society: Social Determinants of Health and Health Disparities in the United States
  • Sociological Approaches to American Health Care
  • Topics in Medical Humanities in East Asia: Illness, Healing and the Body in East Asia 


 This list will be updated frequently. Please contact Hannah Ryan with any questions about minor requirements.

Courses & Requirements Resources

Medical Humanities Course Listings

browse available Medical Humanities courses

Medical Humanities Minor Requirements

learn more about our requirements, courses, and how to declare a Medical Humanities minor

Medical Humanities Bulletin

learn more about requirements for fulfilling the minor