This programme explores the links between the humanities and medicine from a humanities point of view. Among the questions it considers are: What can the humanities contribute to healthcare? How do they differ from the sciences? And what can they tell us about illness?
KEY BENEFITS
- Unrivalled central London location, giving immediate access to important medico-historical and cultural resources, including libraries, galleries, archives and museums, e.g. The Wellcome Collection and Library, the Hunterian Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, the British Library etc.
- World class expertise in a breadth of subject areas, including: History of Psychiatry, Literature & Medicine, Philosophy of Medicine and Mental Disorder, Medical Portraiture, Nursing and Film, Bioethics.
- Taught at the Wellcome-funded Centre for the Humanities & Health, which supports the research activities of internationally renowned scholars in the field; has a vibrant and active post-graduate and post-doctoral community; and hosts a lively programme of seminars, conferences and events.
- Close links between the School of Arts & Humanities and one of the largest Schools of Biomedicine in Europe.
KEY FACTS
Student destinations
The programme will appeal to medical and health professionals; students of health policy; those who wish to pursue further academic study in medicine and/or the humanities or those hoping to study on a Medical Humanities PhD programme and considering careers in journalism or bioethics.
Programme leader/s
Professor Brian Hurwitz; Dr Neil Vickers; Dr Lara Feigel
Awarding Institution
King's College London
Credit value (UK/ECTS equivalent)
UK 180/ECTS 90
Duration
One year FT, two years PT, September to September.
Location
Strand Campus.
Year of entry 2013
Offered by
School of Arts and Humanities
Department of English
Closing date
None.
Please note that applicants wishing to apply for funding (e.g. AHRC) must submit their application by the relevant funding deadline, which is usually early in the year. Please see
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/study/pg/funding/sources/index.aspx for information on the available funding opportunities and deadlines.
Applicants to this programme are eligible to be considered for the Wellcome Trust medical humanities master’s studentship. However, as we can only select one applicant for this studentship, if you would like to be considered you will need to submit your application well in advance of the Wellcome’s deadline on 1st March . You must also clearly indicate your interest for consideration for this studentship within your personal statement.
For further information please see:
http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/Funding/Medical-history-and-humanities/Funding-schemes/Personal-awards/WTD003788.htm
No set number.
Fees
PT Home: £3950 (2013)
PT Overseas: £8125 (2013)
FT Home: £7900 (2013)
FT Overseas: £16250 (2013)
CONTACTS
Contact information
Postgraduate Officer, Centre for Arts & Sciences Admissions (CASA)
tel: +44 (0) 20 7848 2765 / 2232 / 7232
fax: +44 (0) 20 7848 7200
Dr Lara Feigel tel: 020 7848 1723
Professor Brian Hurwitz tel +44 (0)20 7848 1348
Email
Centre for Arts and Sciences Admissions:
artshums-graduateadmissions@kcl.ac.uk , Dr Lara Feigel:
lara.feigel@kcl.ac.uk, Professor Brian Hurwitz:
brian.hurwitz@kcl.ac.ukPURPOSE
The MSc in Medical Humanities incorporates the previous King's MSc Medical Humanities and MA Literature and Medicine programmes. The course allows students to choose a broader range of modules within their degree, interact with a wider range of students, and gain a firm footing in the medical humanities by following common core modules.
Students will come from a wide variety of academic and health backgrounds: biosciences such as medicine, nursing, psychology; from health law and social work and humanities trainings in philosophy, film and/or literary studies. They will develop skills in visual, bioethical, literary, historical and philosophical analyses of health care.
DESCRIPTION
The Medical Humanities constitute a growing field of scholarship productive of powerful, innovative analyses of health care issues today. The chief educational aims of this course are to explore the foundations of the field and teach analytical skills that enable students to address questions such as:
- Does studying the humanities make us more humane?
- How are the humanities different from the sciences? What new angles do they offer on old ethical dilemmas?
- What is health? What is illness?
- What kind of evidence about illness does literature provide?
- What is narrative and how embedded are narrative ways of thought in health care?
Students who take this course will come away from it with a strong sense of how a variety of humanities disciplines conceive of health and illness and of the contributions these can make to healthcare. The disciplines involved include Philosophy, Literature, Film, Psychiatry, Art History and Nursing.
EXTRA PROGRAMME INFORMATION
Centre for the Humanities and Health:
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/groups/chh/index.aspx
STRUCTURE OVERVIEW
Core programme content
Core module:
Indicative non-core content
Compulsory modules:- Themes in the Medical Humanities (taught over both semesters);
- Advanced Skills for the Medical Humanities (taught over both semesters).
Sample option modules (three to be taken):- Topics in the philosophy of medicine;
- The Concept of Mental Disorder;
- Illness Narrative as Life Writing;
- Literature and Psychiatry in the Twentieth Century;
- Narrative and Medicine;
- Medicine and Confinement in Modern Societies;
- Medicine on Screen;
- Explorations in Literature and Medicine;
- People, Portraits and Things;
- A variety of bioethics modules.
FORMAT AND ASSESSMENT
Seminar-based teaching; dissertation workshops; assessment by coursework.
MODULES
More information on typical programme modules.
NB it cannot be guaranteed that all modules are offered in any particular academic year.
Module code: 7AAEM660
Credit level: 7
The aim of this module is to offer instruction in the practical skills necessary to develop as Medical Humanities scholars, everything from how to read a set of medical case notes to using archives of texts and illustrated sources. The course is intended to complement the core course, Themes in the Medical Humanities, and it is envisaged that each skills session will last an hour each week and will take place before the core course two-hour seminars. The use of archives is a complex matter and a number of sessions have been set aside for it. Likewise, the writing of a dissertation may come easier to candidates who have the benefit of a humanities training than those with a science background so 6 hours have been set aside for dissertation writing workshops.
Module code: 7AAEM659
Credit level: 7
The chief educational aim of this course is to explore the foundations of this field by asking questions that are often begged: Does studying the humanities make us more humane? How are the humanities different from the sciences? What is health? What is illness? What kind of evidence does literature provide? What is narrative and how embedded are narrative ways of thought and representation in medicine? This course starts from the assumption that the questions Medical Humanities scholars ask are best addressed from specific humanities disciplines.
Through sustained exposure to the way a variety of humanities disciplines addresses questions such as those outlined above, students will learn methods for undertaking Medical Humanities research of their own. The second aim is to introduce students to the different ways these questions appear from the standpoint of humanities’ disciplines and the standpoint of healthcare. The third aim is to familiarise students with some of the main themes and topics of Medical Humanities research. Finally, the course will introduce students to a range of research resources (archival as well as bibliographic) necessary for the study of the Medical Humanities.
Module code: 7AAEM631
Credit level: 0
Credit value: 20
Semester:
Semester 1 (autumn)
Teaching pattern: 1 two-hour weekly seminar
Assessment:
coursework
1 x 4,000 word essay
This module will explore a variety of illness narratives: fictional and non-fictional, by patients and carers, written singly or collectively. We will consider how far illness narrative can claim to be a genre in its own right as well its relation to other forms of life-writing (especially trauma narrative and testimony). We will also read and critique the body of criticism to which illness narrative has given rise, both academic and extra-mural. There are specific questions in life writing that illness seems to throw into especially sharp relief. Chief among these is the question of authenticity.
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/english/modules/2011-12/level7/7aaem631.aspx
Module code: tbc
Credit level: 7
Half-module
Taught by: Professor Rosamund Scott
This module addresses the law relating to assisted reproduction and the embryo, primarily in England & Wales. You explore the law on assisted reproduction and surrogacy and consider legitimate uses of the embryo beyond the reproductive sphere, studying embryo research / stem cell research / therapeutic cloning. These themes are united by the fact that the latter activities may stem from the embryos created but not used in medically assisted reprodution. You also consider some key underlying ethical issues.
Module code: tbc
Credit level: 7
Half-module
Taught by: Professor Rosamund Scott
This module covers aspects of the law relating to reproduction in England and Wales and in selected other jurisdictions, and some key ethical issues underlying the law. You consider the scope of the legal interest in having a child, or in avoiding reproduction or in deciding about the kind of child one may have. You explore the law relating to abortion, prenatal diagnosis, wrongful birth, preimplantation genetic diagnosis, wrongful life, wrongful conception and the sterilisation of someone who is mentally disabled.
Module code: tbc
Credit level: 7
Half-module
Taught by: Professor Penney Lewis
The question whether assisted dying should be legalised is often treated as one which transcends diverse legal systems. As a result, the important context in which individual jurisdictions make decisions about assisted dying and the significance of the legal methods chosen to carry out those decisions is often lost. You study the legal regulation of assisted dying in a wide range of jurisdictions, including those which permit some form(s) of assisted dying and those in which legalisation attempts has been unsuccessful.
Teaching staff: Dr Neil Vickers
Module code: 7AAEM633
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20
Semester:
Semester 2 (spring)
Teaching pattern: One two hour weekly seminar
Assessment:
coursework
1 x 4,000 word essay
This course is intended to complement the course in “Literature and Psychiatry from Locke to Freud” that the convenors already offer via the Literature and Medicine MA. It may run on alternate years with this precursor course or it may supersede the latter entirely. Its primary aim is to explore the explicit representation of psychiatry and psychiatric theory in twentieth-century literature and film. (Thus, this is not a course in the psycho-analytic interpretation of literary texts.) Although psycho-analysis has had the most profound impact on the representation of psychiatry and of mental disorder more generally in twentieth-century European culture, the course will examine a broad range of representations of psychiatrists and psychiatry (early twentieth-century neurology, psycho-analysis, anti-psychiatry, psychiatry based on developments in clinical pharmacology from the 1950s onwards, and evolutionary psychology). It will pay special attention to late twentieth-century depictions of psychiatry before 1920.
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/english/modules/2012-13/level7/7aaem633.aspx
Module code: 7SSEA001
Credit level: 7
This module offers an introduction to the role of discourse in health, illness and medical practice. Discourse analysis explores social life through the analysis of language in its widest sense (including verbal interaction, non-verbal, images, symbols, documents). In this module, we will study genres of language including case reports, scientific papers, drug advertisements and media health stories, as well as interaction in consultations. There will be a particular focus on introducing students to relevant methods in the study of medical discourses.
Module code: 7AAEM651
Credit level: 0
Credit value: 20
Semester:
Semester 2 (spring)
Teaching pattern: 1 x 3 hour seminar and screening
Assessment:
coursework
1 x 4,000 word essay
This module seeks to understand the complex relations between medicine and cinema by critically examining the large body of fiction films that feature doctors and medical care. How have films portrayed doctors and other health professionals, and what does this tell us about societal expectations of – and misgivings about - medicine? What uses has medicine been put to in film? What kinds of narratives recur? Films are drawn from a wide range of periods, countries and genres – from Dr Kildare to Cristi Puiu ('Death of Mr Lazarescu') via Powell and Pressburger's 'A Matter of Life and Death', Akira Kurosawa's 'Drunken Angel' and Michael Crichton's 'Coma'!
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/english/modules/2011-12/level7/7aaem651.aspx
Teaching staff: Ms Pat Walsh
Module code: tbc
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20
Semester:
Semester 1 (autumn)
An important module if you are interested in the moral issues which arise in the context of medical practice and medical law. An introduction to the major theories provides you with a theoretical framework for the analysis of a range of complex problems in medical ethics. You develop a critical awareness of the principles and doctrines operating and learn to apply them in a systematic and creative way to some of the most difficult issues facing the medical profession today.
This module is a pre-requisite for all other modules on the programme.
Module code: 7AAEM662
Credit level: 0
Credit value: 20
Semester:
Semester 1 (autumn)
Teaching pattern: 1 two-hour weekly seminar
Assessment:
coursework
1 x 5,000 word essay
This module is the core course of the Literature and Medicine MA. It explores commonalities and differences in assumptions and methods of two distinct yet overlapping fields and provides the intellectual tools and theoretical basis for productive dialogue between them. The module concentrates on narrative and the various ways in which arrangements of information, encoded in language and/or gesture, can be conceptualised as narratives in radically different ways, for example, by literary theory, ethnography, qualitative studies methodology and narrative medicine.
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/english/modules/2011-12/level7/7aaem624.aspx
Teaching staff: Professor Ludmilla Jordanova
Module code: 7AAH2009
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20 credits
Teaching pattern: 10 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Assessment:
coursework
1 x 4,000 word essay
This module is concerned with the role of visual and material culture in Britain from the Restoration until the beginning of the nineteenth century. It focuses on items that have been endowed with particular value, although not necessarily monetary. More specifically it considers the role of portraits and related objects that were prized because they were associated with significant people. "Significant" does not necessarily mean "elite" or "famous", rather it suggests the ways in which users of portraits viewed sitters who were important to them. Arguably portraits were a central form in which identity was produced, presented and managed in this period, and their use was far more widespread than is generally recognised.
We will consider how objects were made, acquired, exchanged, valued and endowed with meaning and how their historical importance can be appreciated. We shall also be concerned with networks, whether personal or professional, with gifts, with patronage, with artistic practices, with the things themselves and the ways in which they were displayed and used. Students will have a chance to work closely with images and objects, to think about how they are best studied by historians, and about the key changes that took place over the period with respect to identity. Thus the module takes gender, age, social status, marital status, occupation and so on, as issues that are essential for understanding the role of objects such as portraits. Students are expected to give class presentations.
ACADEMIC ENTRY REQUIREMENTS
General entry advice
An undergraduate clinical qualification, eg in Medicine or Nursing, or at least a 2:1 bachelors degree (or overseas equivalent) in a humanities or a science discipline. Other relevant degree-level qualifications will be considered.
APPLYING TO KING'S
To apply for graduate study at King's you will need to complete our graduate online application form. Applying online makes applying easier and quicker for you, and means we can receive your application faster and more securely.
King's does not normally accept paper copies of the graduate application form as applications must be made online. However, if you are unable to access the online graduate application form, please contact the relevant admissions/School Office at King's for advice.
APPLICATION PROCEDURE
Please contact Professor Brian Hurwitz or Lara Feigel by email in the first instance to express interest in this MA or MSc.
PERSONAL STATEMENT & SUPPORTING INFORMATION
Applicants should use their personal statement to explain why they think they are suitable for the course.
FUNDING
Students may apply for AHRC funded places on this course; note however that competition for such places is fierce.
Student profiles
Medical Humanities MSc
I chose King’s Medical Humanities Programme because of the renowned Centre for the Humanities and Health offers a unique cross-disciplinary research environment in association with the Wellcome Trust. The diverse range of background of the research staff from philosophy of science to art to English is mirrored in the teaching course, and moreover, visiting international academics enhance the programme with additional seminars.
The close association of the programme museums and libraries (from the British library to the Wellcome library) provide a truly unrivalled academic background in the heart of London, and many of the researchers in my personal area of interest illness narratives will come to a conference on narrative medicine held by the Centre of Humanities and Health next year. I have studied at Heidelberg University in Germany as well as in Oxford, but the excellence in teaching I have received in King’s by dedicated teachers is truly unparalleled.
I have been fortunate to be considered for funding by the Wellcome Trust, but there are many more funding opportunities, and King’s College has been very helpful in providing advice concerning funding during my application process. As a medical doctor, I greatly value the opportunity to broaden my horizon and I am considering to further pursuing my interest in the medical humanities with a PhD.
Even if I return to medicine to specialise in psychiatry, I am confident that the education and research opportunities provided to me this year will greatly benefit my academic as well as personal development