What makes the Center distinctive?
The Center for Literature, Medicine, and the Biomedical Humanities provides interdisciplinary programs, courses, and summer seminars integrating humanities and health care. Through the study of the humanities, and in particular, through literary works, the Center examines critical health care issues. This work has application in clinical settings, academic medicine, health policy, and the liberal arts environment, and serves to deepen participants’ ability to recognize, understand, and address ethical and humanistic issues in health care contexts.
This Center, which generates public and professional dialogue of issues in health care and biotechnology, is distinct in numerous ways:
- It is the only one of its kind in the country, serving both the college and extended communities.
- It offers the only undergraduate major in Biomedical Humanities.
- It is home of The Literature and Medicine Book Series published by Kent State University Press.
- It c ollaborates with the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Hopewell, Case Western Reserve School of Medicine, the Universityr of Frankfurt, and the Tuskegee University National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care.
- It involves faculty throughout the college in courses that bridge drama, literature, music and the visual arts with health and health care issues.
- It has an annual undergraduate internship with Cleveland Clinic Bioethics Department.
The Center also presentsnumerous projects and functions:
- A summer symposium that brings together health care professionals, humanities scholars, creative artists, and educators in a dynamic learning community.
- Visiting scholars who serve both as faculty and presenters to the entire Hiram community.
- Collaborations with writers and visual and dramatic arts professionals using their talents to address ethical issues.
- Course are offered yearly in the Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies (MAIS) program, and MAIS students have chosen medical humanities as their area of concentration
The Center has four goals for its future development:
- To be the thought leader in medical humanities
- To provide the next generation of health care professionals with an understanding of humanities issues
- To provide humanities resources and information to health care educators
- To raise the level of national discussion of issues in health care and biotechnology
