HRI Seminar Series | March 12, 2020

"Health, Arts, and the Humanities: Crossroads Worth Critical and Creative
Conversations"

Medical and health humanities are growing fields of inquiry and practice. Narrative medicine, theater improv in medical education, integration of visual and literary arts methods in health science research, and even circus pedagogies as means of thinking about social justice in health promotion: these are just a few examples of intersections between arts, health, humanities, and medicine. Thinking about human well-being through
humanities-informed approaches is also ancient: medicine has always been equal parts art and science. The realities of the 21st Century, including
calls to action by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, demand ancient ideas be updated. This presentation explores examples of integrating concepts like antiracism, feminism and anticolonialism into conversations about research, pedagogy, and clinical practice anchored in health humanities concerned with inequities, especially as those inequities are geographically determined. Participants can expect to leave this presentation with a working knowledge of health and medical humanities, with some theoretical frameworks to deploy in their own areas of work, with a list of resources, and with an understanding about ways that critically informed modes of social justice analysis are changing ways health and medical humanities are enacted.