Medical Humanities Minor Requirements

Beyond Boundaries Program

The Medical Humanities minor approaches health, disease and medical care as culturally embedded human experiences that vary across time and place. It draws on existing courses from across Arts and Sciences and includes a Beyond Boundaries inter-school course for first-years called “The Art of Medicine.”

Learn about Beyond Boundaries

Minor Requirements

Units required: 18

The Medical Humanities minor may be declared in Workday as early as the spring semester of a student’s freshman year. 

Course Requirements

Of the required 18 units, students are required to take 15 units (i.e., five courses) of core courses. The remaining 3 (i.e., one course) can be either a core course or an affiliate course. At least 9 units (i.e., three courses) must be taken at the 3000-level or above. Three units may come from study abroad. Students must take courses from at least 2 out of the 7 different disciplinary categories: Classics & Art History (CAH); History (HIS), Medicine, Race, and Ethnicity (MRE); Languages, Literature, Culture (LLC); Performing Arts & Music (PAM); Philosophy & Religious Studies (PHR); and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS). Core courses may also require additional prerequisites within their home departments or programs. All courses must be taken for grade to count for the minor. 

Core Courses: 

Include but are not limited to. Check Workday for active listings.

  • Advanced Medical French (LLC)
  • The AIDS Epidemic: Inequalities, Ethnography, and Ethics (WGSS, MRE)
  • Ancient Greek and Roman Gynecology (CAH)
  • Ancient Greek and Roman Medicine (CAH)
  • Ancient Madness (CAH)
  • Art and the Mind-Brain (PHR)
  • The Art of Health in Nice [French language prerequisites] (LLC)
  • Biomedical Ethics (MRE)
  • Cinema & Society: Screening Health
  • Contemporary Women’s Health/Gender and Health (WGSS)
  • Current Topics in the History of Medicine (HIS)
  • Disability Studies Before “Disability” [Topics in French Literature] [French language prerequisites] (LLC)
  • Disease, Madness and Death Italian-Style (LLC)
  • First-Year Seminar: Stories of Medicine* [freshmen only]
  • Freshman Seminar: Global Health in the Francophone World (LLC/MRE)
  • From Hysteria to Hysterectomy: Women's Health Care in America (WGSS)
  • Galen's "On Prognosis": A Social History of Medicine in Second-Century Rome (LLC)
  • Gender, Religion, Medicine, & Science (WGSS)
  • Health and Disease in World History (HIS)
  • Healing and Social Justice (WGSS)
  • Historical Methods-European History (HIS)
  • Historical Racial Violence: Legacies & Reckonings (MRE)
  • History of the Body [Advanced Seminar] (HIS)
  • History of Public Health
  • Humors, Pox, and Plague: Medieval and Early Modern Medicine (HIS)
  • In Depth: Care Work (LLC)
  • The Language of Cancer (LLC)
  • Literature and Medicine (LLC)
  • Making Sex and Gender: Understanding the History of the Body (HIS)
  • Mad: Mental Illness, Power and Resistance in Africa and the Caribbean [Advanced Seminar]  (MRE)
  • Mamma Mia!: Motherhood, Maternity, and the Female Reproductive Body in the Italian Cultural Context (LLC)
  • Medical Narratives, Narrative Medicine [French language prerequisites] (LLC)
  • Medical French [French language prerequisites] (LLC)
  • Medical Spanish [Spanish language prerequisites] (LLC)
  • Medicine, Healing and Experimentation in the Contours of Black History (HIS/MRE)
  • Medicine, Disease, and Empire [Advanced Seminar] (HIS/MRE)
  • Nature, Technology, and Medicine in Korea (LLC)
  • Philosophy of Medicine (PHR)
  • Presence in Performance: Alexander Technique and Mindful Movement for Performing Artists (PAM)
  • Religion, Health, and Wellness in Modern America (PHR)
  • Religion & Healing (PHR)
  • Mental Health and Mental Illness: Philosophical Questions [PNP Seminar] (PHR)
  • Sex in Italian Culture and Media (LLC)
  • Staging Illness (PAM)
  • The Art of Medicine [freshmen only]
  • The Racial and Sexual Politics of Public Health (MRE, WGSS)
  • Thinking-It-Through: Transplants [French language prerequisites] (LLC)
  • Bodies in Pain: Disability and Illness in the Nineteenth Century (LLC)
  • Trans Studies (WGSS)
  • What Is Medical Humanities? (can count for any disciplinary category)
  • Women and Crime in the Evolution of American History (HIS/MRE)
  • Women, Health and Media (WGSS)
  • Writing and Medicine (LLC)
     

Affiliate Courses:

Include but are not limited to. Check Workday for active listings.

  • Anthropological Perspectives on the Fetus
  • Adventures in Nosology: The Nature and Meaning of Disease
  • Culture, Illness, and Healing in Asia
  • Cultures of Health in Latin America
  • Disability, Quality of Life & Community Responsibility
  • The Female Life-Cycle in Cross-Cultural Perspective
  • Gender, Culture and Madness
  • Global Health and Language
  • Global Mental Health
  • Health, Healing and Ethics: Introduction to Medical Anthropology
  • Inequality by Design: Understanding Racial & Ethnic Health Disparities in the United States
  • Introduction to Global Health
  • Living, Dying and Death: A Biopsychosocial Approach to Understanding the End of Life
  • Magic Medicine: An Anthropological Approach to the Study of Religion and Medicine
  • Medical Sociology
  • Race, Reproduction, and Justice
  • Sick Society: Social Determinants of Health and Health Disparities in the United States
  • Sociological Approaches to American Health Care
  • Topics in Medical Humanities in East Asia: Illness, Healing and the Body in East Asia
  • Water and Health in the Colonial and Postcolonial World


 This list will be updated frequently. Please contact Tia Crook with any questions about minor requirements.

Courses & Requirements Resources

Study Abroad with Medical Humanities

approved Medical Humanities study abroad programs

Medical Humanities Bulletin

learn more about requirements for fulfilling the minor

A&S Course Explorer Tool

search courses offered by program of study

Declare a Medical Humanities Minor

The Medical Humanities minor may be declared in Workday beginning in the spring semester of the student’s first year, or any time thereafter. Potential Medical Humanities minors should have taken (or be at the end of the semester in) at least one core Medical Humanities course. Once students declare the minor in Workday, they will receive an Intake Form from Hannah Ryan via email. Completion of the form is required to be approved for the minor. Below are the steps for how to add a secondary program of study in Workday. 

Add a secondary program of study 

  1. In Workday, click the Profile icon, then click View Profile. 
  2. In the Profile card, click Academics. 
  3. From the Overview tab, click Add Program of Study. 
  4. Search for the new program of study in the New Program of Study drop-down menu. 
  5. Navigate to the far-right column and enter an expected completion date. 
    • The expected completion date should match the completion date for your primary program of study.
  6. Verify that the Declare Date field is updated with today’s date. 
  7. Click Submit to send your requested changes for approval.