Units

In the Faculty of Arts, Law and Social Sciences, teaching is organised in two twelve-week teaching blocks. and details of the programme structure and units of study can be found in the Unit and Programme Catalogue. Units are delivered by both the departments of English and Philosophy. 

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 dissertation 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.