In the Faculty of Arts (Apache redirected) teaching is organised in two twelve-week teaching blocks.

Teaching Block One

Teaching Block Two

Descriptions

Philosophy and History of Medicine

If you get ill, you are very lucky that you live now rather than 200 years ago, when simple infections would often prove fatal, surgery was carried out without pain relief, and almost all illnesses were treated with blood-letting or medicines based on poisonous mercury and antimony. It might appear that current medicine magnificently demonstrates the triumph of applied science, but the truth of this claim is, in fact, far from obvious. This unit examines some of the metaphysical and epistemological questions arising from the history of the making of modern medicine.  From the new hospitals of the French Revolution, through the “laboratory revolution” of the late-nineteenth century, to 21st century “evidence based medicine”.  Philosophy of Medicine is an increasingly prominent area within philosophy of science and we will all have to engage with medical practices at some time in our lives.  Prior knowledge of philosophy of science or biology is not assumed. This unit is open to philosophy students.

Critical issues (in English Literature)

The purpose of this course unit is to help you to explore, expand and cross-question the ways in which you read a text so that you develop deeper and more flexible ap-proaches to thinking about literature and literary analysis. In the process, you will en-counter some of the major theories and critical preoccupations currently informing English as a University subject. By considering a range of literary works in the light of designated weekly topics, you will become acquainted with the guiding ideas (and, to an extent, with the specialized vocabularies) of certain influential strands of what is often termed ‘critical theory’. In other words, you will be encouraged to consider the potential usefulness of discussing literature in relation to ideas derived from, for ex-ample, narratology (theories about how narratives work), psychoanalysis, post-colonialism, gender studies and so forth. This unit is open to joint- and single-honours English students.

Literature and Medicine

This unit will explore the interrelation between medicine and literature across a range of literary genres and historical periods. Drawing on this historical perspective, it will explore the changing literary representations of patients, illness and the medical profession.

Topics will include: the body in literature; the complex interaction of literature and psychoanalysis; illness and the nature of artistic experience; Shakespeare and medicine; literary constructions of physical and mental illness; and illness as metaphor. Open to both English and Medical Students, the unit will expose students to the challenges of interdisciplinarity.

This unit is open to joint, single-honours, and MA English students.

Death, Dying and Disease

Dissertation

This dissertation unit, unique to iBAMH, is designed to allow students to demonstrate their ability to integrate their learning from the other units of the programme.

Students write a dissertaton of 6,500 to 8,000 words (including quotations and notes, excluding bibliography) on a subject of their own choice, agreed by the Unit Director and a supervisor from the Departments of English or Philosophy.

The topic of the dissertation must include some aspect of the medical humanities and draw on learning in other units in the programme. Depending on the topic, additional supervision from a clinician may be available.

Students meet regularly with their supervisor(s), prepare plans of work, demonstrate abilities to search and assimilate information from a variety of sources and produce a well reasoned account in clear academic prose.

Topics for dissertations in recent years have included: Lovesickness in Literature and Biomedicine.  The Royal Navy, Cholera and Quarantine in the Nineteenth Century.  A Case for Race-Based Medicine within the Clinical Encounter: Scientificness, Racism, and Racial Identity. Death without God in Tennyson's In Memoriam.  Dracula in Literature and Medicine. Women and depression in Shakespeare's Hamlet and Alice Birchâs Anatomy of a Suicide.  Nutrition and the Death Camps.  Narrative Competence and its Lessons for the Clinic.  The Physical and Metaphysical in Keats.  A Discussion of the Importance of Medical Humanities in the Practice of Medicine.  What is Gender Dysphoria? Contesting the pathologisation of the trans identity.  Medical Humanitarianism and Biocitizenship: South Africa's Struggle with HIV/AIDS.  (S)Mothered: Exploring Maternal Identity in Toni Morrisons Beloved and Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones.