The humanities (i.e. history, philosophy, politics, arts and literature) are hugely important in answering questions related to the world-wide problem of health inequalities. Public health programs are often based on the research models of the medical- and social sciences. Yet, organizations like the WHO and medical journals increasingly call for changing vocabularies and strategies to deal with today’s health challenges. During the summer school we will explore how the humanities are essential in this current call for change. The module follows the new methodology of the critical medical humanities, which assumes that the humanities and health sciences are entangled and ask for non-reductionist and non-hierarchical forms of interdisciplinary cooperation. To this end we encourage students and researchers from the humanities and the health sciences to apply.
The Humanities week consists of five parts:
Part 1 will introduce students to the methodology of critical medical humanities as well as the summerschool’s ‘regulative cycle’ and the related question of what the humanities can contribute to questions of health inequality.
The underlying idea of the summer school is that poverty is a bad thing, responsible for bad health, and that the humanities can play a constructive role in mitigating the situation. However, we should also face up to the fact that for a long time in Western culture, poverty has been presented as irrelevant or even as healthy for body and soul. We will look at the longue durée of this strand in Western culture: from ancient Greco-Roman philosophy and Christian monasticism to Enlightenment praise for the health effects of poverty.
Part 3 will focus on the politics of global health (international health governance, access to health care, colonialism and decoloniality in health, inequalities and injustices, and grassroots resistance etc.). Students will critically examine the structures of global health governance such as infectious disease and population politics, as well as policy discourses to understand underlying cultural and political narratives and myths
Part 4 will deal with the ways art practices and art consumption affect wellbeing and the differential access individuals have to participation in and ways of understanding the arts. We will ask: How do the arts foster wellbeing? What roadblocks prevent participation in or time spent with various art practices that are consequential for our wellbeing? And, how can we create greater equity in terms of access to art, arts-related thinking, and artistic ways of being in the world?
The summer school closes with communication in health settings, which is very heterogeneous both in terms of goals, settings, modalities, and participant frameworks. In this session, we will discuss the challenges for both medical professionals and patients for successful communication. We will discuss how research from the humanities can help to analyze different discourse on health and how outcomes from communication research can help to optimize health communication in different settings.
Course leader
Prof. dr. Rina Knoeff
Target group
This summer school has been designed for students and researchers from the humanities and the health sciences.
It is expected that the participants have a sufficient command of the English language to actively participate in the discussions and to present their own work in English.
Course aim
During the summer school we will explore how the humanities are essential in this current call for changing vocabulries and strategies to deal with today's health challenges
Fee info
EUR 500: Including lunches, coffee/tea, welcoming drinks, city tour, social programme
For further information, please click the "LINK TO ORIGINAL" button below.