MA Medical and Health Humanities (Part Time)

Key details

MA MEDICAL AND HEALTH HUMANITIES (PART TIME)

Start Year

2023

Attendance

Part Time

Award

Degree of Master of Arts

Duration (years)

How have ideas of health and illness evolved in different historical and cultural locations? How do encounters between patients and clinicians create narratives of illness and health, and how do depictions of illness, pain and disability in literature, media and culture influence these narratives? Can we find meaning in suffering?

Whether you’re a clinician planning a memoir, an intercalating medical student wanting to understand why histories of embodied experience matter in your practice, a humanities or social sciences graduate interested in health, illness and disability, or a professional interested in social prescribing and place-based healthcare, this versatile interdisciplinary course is for you.

You’ll learn about narrative medicine and the importance of story. You'll analyse contemporary and historical representations of disability and illness, and consider the power of writing as a way of understanding experiences connected to health. Additionally, you’ll examine the role of the arts in health and wellbeing, learning about cutting edge research and practice within the applied arts and health sectors.

About

Our Masters in Medical and Health Humanities explores health as a holistic and culturally embedded experience. It will challenge you to think critically and philosophically about what it means to be a doctor, nurse or allied health professional, and what it means to be a patient. We will explore how ‘health’, ‘illness’ and ‘disability’ are understood, and how concepts such as ‘quality of life’, ‘pathology’ or ‘impairment’ are constructed and take shape within cultures. The programme has at its core an understanding that lived experiences of illness and disability are affected by gender, ethnicity, sexuality and class (among other intersecting identities), as well as being situated within particular geographical and historical locations. Through studying aspects of literature, media, art, philosophy and history, and their intersections with health, you will be introduced to key debates within critical medical humanities.

The programme offers exciting opportunities for creative and practice-based learning, drawing inspiration from UEA’s unique strengths in these areas, including in partnership with the world-famous Sainsbury Centre. You can choose to develop your own life-writing, fiction or artwork on health-related themes. You’ll engage with cutting-edge content, for example graphic medicine, which pushes the boundaries of current understandings around narrative medicine.

Additionally, this course will build your knowledge of inclusive health policy and practice, as well as of the burgeoning arts and health sector. You’ll learn about contemporary policy developments such as social prescribing and place-based healthcare, as well as accumulating skills and knowledge for working in the cultural or health sectors - including in role areas that link them.

You’ll be introduced to techniques for scholarship and research used in the humanities, as well as to key methods and practices from the social and health sciences. You’ll have the opportunity to hone your knowledge and skills by undertaking a final research project in the field of medical and health humanities or producing an extended creative piece with a critical commentary.

Alongside examining the intersection of the health and cultural sectors, including the new NHS Integrated Care Systems and the policy context of social prescribing, the versatility of this course means that one week you’ll be delving into global histories of medicine and the legacies of colonialism in public health, the next you’ll be critically considering representations of disabled bodies in contemporary culture, and if your interests lie in creative practice there are ample opportunities to pursue these too.

September 2023 opportunities. Discover more

Explore UEA's work in the Medical and Health Humanities

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NICHE Scholarship for MA Medical and Health Humanities

NICHE are funding two ‘artist in residence’ scholarships for students on the UEA MA in Medical and Health Humanities.

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Important Information

Whilst the University will make every effort to offer the courses listed, changes may sometimes be made arising from the regular review of course programmes. Where this activity leads to significant (but not minor) changes to programmes, there will normally be prior consultation of students and others. Changes may for example consist of variations to the content and method of delivery of programmes, courses and other services, to discontinue programmes, courses and other services and to merge or combine programmes or courses. The University will endeavour to keep such changes to a minimum, and will inform students.

After the Course

By the end of your MA, you will understand more deeply key debates in the medical and health humanities. You will have developed analytical as well as practical skills, for example advanced listening skills and a deeper understanding of narrative, including your own. You will have developed skills in research methods that could lead you onto a PhD, into the policy sector, or into research and evaluation roles in the arts and health field. You will have built a portfolio of work that could lead to a career as a writer or elsewhere in the creative industries. Existing healthcare practitioners will have enhanced their skillset and be ready to apply this to current practice or new roles.

If you’re looking to progress to a PhD, you’ll be well prepared for sustained research in a variety of fields relating to the medical and health humanities, from arts and health evaluation, to literary and cultural studies, and sociological research exploring health experiences.

Career destinations

A degree at UEA will prepare you for a wide variety of careers. We've been ranked 1st for Job Prospects by StudentCrowd in 2022.

Examples of careers you could enter include:

Policy and research roles
Public sector roles, e.g. social prescribing link worker
Consultancy roles
Third sector and NGO roles, including in arts and health
Careers in writing or other creative industries
Academic research (PhD)

September 2023 opportunities. Discover more

Explore UEA's work in the Medical and Health Humanities

FIND OUT MORE >

NICHE Scholarship for MA Medical and Health Humanities

NICHE are funding two ‘artist in residence’ scholarships for students on the UEA MA in Medical and Health Humanities.

Apply Now >

Scholarship Finder

Explore our generous range of scholarships to support your study.

FIND OUT MORE >

Will a Master's help my career?

Discover why further study can have a positive career benefit.

FIND OUT MORE >

Course Reference Number: 8043555

Assessment for Year 1

Your achievement on the MA course will be assessed via coursework, through methods including essays, reports, and your final dissertation. If your interest in Medical and Health Humanities lies in the potential to develop your skills in creative expression, you will have opportunities to submit creative or practice-based pieces (such as a film, short story, or poetry collection) for assignments within certain modules. You will usually be required to submit a linked critical commentary with your creative work.

For your dissertation, you may choose to undertake a research project drawing from the humanities fields such as a literary, cultural, media, historical or art historical study, or you may use methods from the health and social sciences to undertake an applied project. You also have the option of producing an extended creative piece with a linked critical commentary.

Structure

You can take the MA Medical and Health Humanities as either a one-year full-time course, or as a part-time course over two years.

Your learning is anchored in the comprehensive pair of core modules, Introduction to Medical and Health Humanities: Histories, Theories, Methods I and II. These modules provide you with a grounding in key debates and issues in the field, equipping you with the skills to think critically about what the Medical and Health Humanities mean to different people, and how they have been used by diverse groups, from clinicians to healthcare educators, humanities scholars and creative practitioners. You will also learn a range of research methods and practices of enquiry to apply to your own investigations in the field.

In Semester 1, you take:

Introduction to Histories, Theories and Methods in Medical and Health Humanities I (20 credits)

In Semester 2 you take:

Introduction to Histories, Theories and Methods in Medical and Health Humanities II (20 credits)

You will also take one optional module (20 credits) in Year 1, Semester 2.

You can choose among a range of modules, which offer opportunities for you to deepen your knowledge of a variety of topics relating to the medical humanities, for example: historical and contemporary ideas about embodiment; histories and theories of gender and sexuality; histories of race and resistance; and advancing practice in dementia care; among other themes.

Teaching and Learning

You will be taught by a team of academics, clinicians and writers, all experts in their fields, who bring diverse disciplinary perspectives to the study of medicine, health and the humanities. Between them, they have strengths in critical disability studies, creative writing, including medical memoir, cultural and screen representations of embodiment, histories and cultures of medicine and of mental health, and methodology and knowledge production in medicine and the medical and health humanities. UEA also operates a Medical and Health Humanities network, bringing together researchers and practitioners with many different interests, and an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach to teaching and research lies at the heart of our provision.

You’ll mainly be taught through a blend of lectures, interactive seminars and workshops. Typically, each module will comprise around 3 hours per week of teaching events, with some modules deviating from this structure. The course teaching will incorporate some online elements as well as on-campus learning.

Independent study

Working independently is an important aspect of study at MA level. You’ll do preparatory reading for teaching events as well as working towards your coursework. UEA has excellent facilities to support your independent study, from comprehensive library materials (including electronic resources and databases), to academic skills support from the Learning Enhancement Team and Royal Literary Fellows, and inspirational repositories of visual arts and archival material are on your doorstep in the form of the Sainsbury Centre and the UEA Archives. Additionally, postgraduate students have the opportunity to attend many exciting programmes of lectures and events run by different departments and groups across the university, allowing you to take full advantage of the vibrant learning environment surrounding your course.

September 2023 opportunities. Discover more

Open Days

Assessment for Year 2

Structure

In Semester 1, you will take the following bespoke modules:

Narratives of Healthcare, Illness and Disability. With input from practicing life-writers and academics working in the critical medical humanities, you will explore what it means to conceptualise health as a ‘narrated’ experience. You will have seminars led by academics, clinicians and writers on a range of topics including the wounded healer and radical empathy in forensic psychiatry, as well as considering how concepts such as ‘mental illness’ and ‘child development’ shape how we think about personhood, disability and wellbeing.

Applied Arts and Health. In this module you will learn about the role of the creative arts in health and wellbeing. Sessions will be delivered by a range of specialist practitioners, for example, leaders of local Non-Governmental Organisations and arts organisations, policymakers, curators, social prescribers, and artists.

In Semester 2, you will take one further optional module.

In the summer of Year 2, you will undertake your Dissertation: this is your chance to investigate an area of interest more deeply, under expert supervision in your subfield. You may choose to pursue a research project drawing from the humanities fields such as a literary, cultural, media, historical or art historical study, or you may use methods from the health and social sciences to complete an applied project. You also have the option of producing an extended creative piece with a linked critical commentary.

Teaching and Learning

Independent study

September 2023 opportunities. Discover more

Open Days

YEAR 1

Assessment for Year 1

Compulsory Modules

Optional A Modules

(20 credits)

RACE AND RESISTANCE

Code AMAS7019B

Credits 20

Where there is power, there is resistance (Foucault). What forms resistance to oppression might have taken however, and indeed, what counts as resistance, are at the heart of this module. Your module is about theories of race and strategies of resistance within the Americas. Interdisciplinary and team-taught, it begins with the premise that the ideology of white racial dominance continues to subordinate American peoples of colour. You will then examine a range of forms and strategies of resistance, from covert and overt forms under the slave system, to the response of indigenous peoples to the overt power of the State, to the struggle for civil rights during the 20th century. You will consider particular case studies each week drawn from the teaching team's research areas. You will develop a deeper critical understanding of conceptual terms associated with race and resistance. You will be asked to think comparatively, reflecting on different forms of resistance and the differing methodologies used to analyse it. The interdisciplinary nature of your module means you will benefit from a range of expertise and disciplines (intellectually and methodologically). Your module will enable you to understand how history, literature and studies can be put in dialogue with each other around the same overarching theme. You will learn through seminars, tutorials, and self-directed study. The focus of the week's discussion will center around questions you've developed from the set-reading and your own additional resources if applicable. You'll be assessed through coursework with various workshops and tutorials to guide you in developing this. You will develop knowledge and skills to enable you to take forward either to further study or in your chosen career. Aside from honing your research, writing, and presentation skills, you'll also develop your communication and leadership skills. Growing intellectually through the weekly small-group discussions, you'll also meet each other outside of the context of the seminar for further discussions around a set task.

POLICY IMPLEMENTATION AND EVALUATION

Code HSC-7187E

Credits 20

Within the political, social, technical, economic, organisational and professional contexts in which healthcare is delivered, this module explores how practitioners can utilise their expert power and negotiation skills to influence a culture of creativity and innovation for advancing practice.

ADVANCING PRACTICE IN DEMENTIA CARE

Code HSC-7194H

Credits 20

You will develop your skills and knowledge of working with people living with dementia across a wide range of community and inpatient settings. You will focus on improving your knowledge about and advancing practice in dementia, person-centred care and care interactions.

WORKING WITH OLDER PEOPLE: BIOPSYCHOSOCIAL APPROACHES

Code HSC-7195X

Credits 20

This module is about developing your skills and knowledge for working with older people across a wide range of community and inpatient settings. The focus is on improving knowledge about, and advancing practice in, working with older people from biological, psychological and social perspectives.

CRITICALLY QUEER: SEX, GENDER AND SEXUALITY

Code HUM-7009B

Credits 20

How are sex, gender and sexuality brought together to ensure the normative privileging of heterosexuality and the sex/gender binary? What possibilities are there for resistance to these norms? How does such resistance situate us socially, culturally, and politically? With queer theory as its focus and drawing on case studies from different fields – literature, film, drama and performance, politics, history, among others – in this interdisciplinary module, you'll examine sex, gender, and sexuality as effects of historically specific socio-cultural and geo-political power relations. Rather than approaching queer studies as a singular or coherent school of thought, you'll be encouraged to continuously problematise queer studies as a field and a mode of analysis, asking: What does it mean for theory, in particular, to be queer? What is involved in queering theory and being critically queer? What kinds of bodies or desires does queer describe? What are the promises of queer theory, and what are its perils? What is the future of queer? While doing so, you'll explore a variety of topics, such as politics of difference, representation and cultural production, performance and performativity, temporality and spatiality, subjectivity and embodiment. Overall, in this module, you'll problematise and challenge normalisations, hierarchies and relations of domination and explore the powerful processes and languages that attempt to fix sex, gender and sexuality as unchanging and universal.

THE BODY, GENDER AND VIOLENCE: HISTORICAL AND CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVES

Code HUM-7010B

Credits 20

How has the gendered body been presented historically? How does this compare with contemporary issues surrounding gendering the body? How has the body been gendered in times of violence and war? What role have specific contexts, theological and theoretical frameworks played in shaping societal attitudes to gender? These are just some of the key ideas and contexts explored in this module. Ranging from the foundations of western thought in the ancient world to post-humanist media platforms and cybernetics, this module investigates how the body has been gendered by humanity in thought, through performance and in representation. You will discover the historical and interdisciplinary approaches to gender, how attitudes to gender and the body have changed over time and how they inform contemporary society.

GENDER AND POWER

Code PPLM7015B

Credits 20

Providing a conceptual overview of feminist research approaches, you will examine contemporary gender and power relations. You will examine both the formal and informal power structures that shape the experience of gender. Bringing together the fields of media, sociology, politics and cultural studies, the module explores the extent to which feminist theory informs gender-based activism.

September 2023 opportunities. Discover more

Open Days

Important Information

Whilst the University will make every effort to offer the modules listed, changes may sometimes be made arising from the annual monitoring and review of modules. Where this activity leads to significant change to a programme and modules, the University will endeavour to consult with affected students. The University may not be able to offer a module for reasons outside of its control, such as the illness of a member of staff. Availability of optional modules may be restricted owing to timetabling, lack of demand, or limited places. Where this is the case, you will be asked to make alternative module choices and you will be supported during this process.

YEAR 2

Assessment for Year 2

Compulsory Modules

NARRATIVES OF HEALTHCARE, ILLNESS AND DISABILITY

Code HUM-7018A

Credits 20

What does it mean to conceptualise health as a ‘narrated’ experience? In what sense is the healthcare encounter a space in which a narrative of illness experience is co-created or negotiated? And how do past theories and cultural narratives around healthcare, physical and mental illness and disability influence how an individual’s personhood and subjectivity is understood? Developed collaboratively with input from renowned life-writers and creative practitioners, as well as with researchers working at the intersection of literary studies, studies in mental health, and critical disability studies, this module will lead you in examining the multidimensional relationships between narrative, health and creative practice. You will engage critically with theorisations of ‘health, ‘development’, ‘illness’, and personhood, as well as with writing from a range of genres, styles and disciplines, including medical writing, childcare manuals, literary texts and TV documentaries. The module also gives you the opportunity to explore the role of narrative, empathy and listening skills in healthcare practice, relating these skills to the needs of those receiving and delivering healthcare. Through reading, writing, and storytelling, you will consider crucial ethical and social justice issues in health and care, as well as examining the nature of suffering.

APPLIED ARTS AND HEALTH

Code HUM-7017A

Credits 20

How can the arts be used to support wellbeing, both in the general population and in the health workforce? What is social prescribing, and how does it work in practice? And what is the funding landscape when it comes to arts and health? This module will introduce you to Applied Arts and Health as a vibrant field based on a patchwork of interlinked, and still evolving, practices and policies; one which brings together a wide range of individuals and organisations working across different sectors, united by a shared aim to support the health and wellbeing of their communities and constituents through creative, arts-based interventions. These include health services and NHS Trusts, local authorities, arts and cultural organisations, educational organisations, social enterprises, individual artists and health practitioners, and self-organised community groups and activists. In order to explore the complexities, challenges and opportunities of this still-emerging area, you will examine case studies in arts and health in the local area, considering how the practices, concepts and interventions discussed could be applied in other contexts and places. The module has a civic focus and ethos, and alongside workshops from academics embedded in the field, it brings in practitioners to share their front-line reflections and expertise with you. Vocationally-orientated, it will encourage you to consider where you might fit within arts and health, now or in the future: as creative facilitators, community changemakers, policy leaders, health and social activists, educators, researchers, future commissioners, or even in roles that have not yet been established.

MEDICAL AND HEALTH HUMANITIES DISSERTATION

Code MED-7093X

Credits 60

This module gives you the opportunity to undertake a sustained piece of research on a subject that interests you within the Medical and Health Humanities, putting into practice the methods and skills acquired throughout the rest of your course. In devising a project, you may utilise methods and approaches from either the humanities, the social sciences, or the health sciences. The dissertation could be: a humanities research dissertation, such as a literary or cultural study; a creative piece with a critical appraisal, or; a health sciences research dissertation such as a systematic/narrative review of the evidence on a chosen topic. Where ethical approval is received early in the year, you may be able to undertake an evaluation of a small-scale arts and health intervention (guided by an external partner’s brief), or a small-scale qualitative research project involving human subjects. You will produce the dissertation with supervision from within either the Faculty of Arts and Humanities and/or the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, depending on the nature of your project. You will devise your dissertation proposal with support from the MA course teaching team, who will then allocate you a supervisor. In the unlikely event that supervisory expertise cannot be provided on a specific topic, the course team will work with you to identify an alternative.