In recent years, critical and broadly humanistic studies of medicine have become one of the most vibrant sites of creative and exciting interdisciplinary research. Scholars working from a wide range of perspectives have been moved to push beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries as they have sought to document and understand medicine in its many dimensions: as a socially authoritative form of knowledge about nature and the body; as a set of social practices; as a congeries of institutions; as a site for the formation of subjectivities and for the exercise of governmentality, and more. At the same time, people working within medicine have increasingly come to recognize the need to incorporate interdisciplinary, critical, and humanistic perspectives into their own education and practice. The CMH crossdisciplinary research cluster seeks to highlight, strengthen and nurture scholarly work focused on the study of health, illness and medicine, that is currently emerging at the intersections of a number of fields, including: medical anthropology, science studies, feminist studies, history, philosophy, critical race studies, postcolonial studies, and environmental studies.
“Medical humanities” has an already venerable pedigree, as a term used to advocate for the view that physicians should not be narrowly technical experts, but should rather be broadly educated, intellectually alive, socially responsible, and ethical citizens. We fully share and endorse this goal, but feel that a truly interdisciplinary and broadly humanistic approach to medicine entails far more than simply educating practitioners to be well-rounded individuals, important as that is. Our addition of the term “critical” signals some of the ways in which our vision departs from more traditional medical humanities.
First, we follow the usage of medical anthropologists, among whom the term “critical” is used to describe approaches to the study of illness, health and medicine that emphasize questions of power and inequality.
Second, insertion of the term “critical” serves to unsettle a tendency, even within medical humanities, to conceive of “medicine” and “humanities” as separate fields of inquiry. We hold that the study of medicine as part of society, culture and history necessarily entails a “critical” and reflexive questioning of the boundaries of professional as well as disciplinary expertise, such that humanities do not simply supplement medicine but make medicine itself an object of study as well.
Third, we consciously draw upon more widely shared understandings of “critical,” as indicating a stance of questioning, interrogating, and criticizing the status quo. Whether the motivating impulse is antiracist, feminist, socialist, democratic, environmentalist, or some combination of all of these, most scholars who have devoted themselves to the study of medicine in social, cultural, and historical context have been moved to do so by a conviction that current configurations of illness, health, medicine, healing, and care for the suffering are neither the only nor the best ones possible. Beyond narrowly academic interests, in other words, scholars engaged in Critical Medical Humanities share a vision of medicine as part of a world that could be improved, and of scholarly work as one small part of the broader collective project of transforming that world for the better.
CMH seeks to build community among local scholars with shared research interests who are currently working in relative isolation from each other. Ultimately, we hope to help make the UW a center for creative, exciting, and important interdisciplinary work in Critical Medical Humanities.
