Why join the course?
Now in its fifth year this popular module, “Finding a Leg to Stand On: Clinical, Critical and Creative Approaches to the Human Body”, is exceptionally highly rated by students and external examiners alike.* It continues to develop the successful collaboration between Birkbeck, University of London and St George’s, University of London, in which medical humanities is taught to a joint cohort of students from the School of Arts (Birkbeck) and science and healthcare students from St George’s.
For external students joining the module, it is an exciting opportunity for transdisciplinary learning.
Audience
Clinical staff, including nurses, allied health professionals and medical staff and artists interested in the intersects between healthcare and creative practice. Entry requirements for the Level 6 and Level 7 module will differ.
Course description
What does it mean to be and have a body? How do we speak about and define bodily experience? What happens when the body fails? How do we diagnose and treat the body?
These complex questions play a fundamental role in the practice of healthcare and will form the basis of rigourous interdisciplinary discussion.
This module is taught by clinicians and artists from St George’s Medical School and academic staff from Birkbeck. Using an applied medical humanities’ approach, in which the different Humanities disciplines (philosophy, cultural studies, literary studies, sociology, history of art), Fine Art and Medicine are used as lenses through which to analyse illness, human experience and clinical practice, the module focuses on the leg as a vehicle through which to critique the body, health and illness. As a tangible example of a component of the body, the leg allows us to explore the ways in which bodies are constructed culturally, clinically, politically and experientially. The module examines the relations between culture, society, the body and illness through exploring ideas such as surface and depth, normality and abnormality, presence and loss, visibility and invisibility, beauty and ugliness, illness and health. Learning activities include: critical analysis of short selected texts, practical exercises such as collaborative drawing, creative writing, imagined case histories and discussion of ethical issues, visual analysis, museum visits, reflective writing and small group discussion.
On successful completion of the module, students will be able to:
- Discuss and interrogate, with peers from contrasting educational backgrounds, the complexities of human experience of identity, embodiment, illness and pain. This will enable them to position their own disciplinary understandings within a broader picture of different disciplinary approaches, understanding the ways in which key terms such as body, identity, doctor, patient, disease, symptom, health are discursively constructed in different, contexts, historical periods and cultural environments.
- Write in critical and more exploratory or experiential ways about the nature of their own clinical or creative and intellectual practices. Communicate findings and conclusions clearly to specialist and non-specialist audiences.
- Reflect critically on their clinical, intellectual and/or creative practices both individually and in a group.
Teaching date
The course will run on Monday evenings of Spring Term 2024 from 6.00 pm to 8.30 pm (blended teaching on site and online), starting on 8 January 2024 for 11 weeks.
Teaching ends at the end of March and essays will be due in at the end of April 2024.
Assessment
1000 words of reflective writing (0%), a 1500-word resubmission of reflective writing (40%), and a 3000-word essay (60%).
Certification
You will be provided with a Level 6 or Level 7, 30 credit university transcript upon successful completion of the course.
Hear from previous students
"I wish the course never had to end, but I am so excited to take everything I've learned and continue to explore the medical humanities!"
- Participating student, 2019
"I feel privileged to have had this learning opportunity."
- Participating student, 2023
"Thank you so much for an incredible chance you have given us! I will miss our Monday session and we could not be luckier to be facilitated by three amazing experts. Thank you Jo, Annie and Deborah!"
- Participating student
"Excellent course material and exposed to stimulating speakers and discussions."
- Participating student
"This is an exemplary, flagship course that is the epitome of excellence in higher education."
- External examiners report, 2020
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