The Humanities Research Center and Rice's Medical Humanities program is thrilled to be running, this Fall semester, its second iteration of the Health and Humanities Master Class. This course presents weekly lectures by medical humanities researchers from the UT School of Public Health, the American Psychological Association, UT Health Science Center, and Rice University at the Health Museum. These lectures will be eligible for continuing medical education credits for health professionals through UTHealth; combined with seminar discussions, they form Rice's HURC 306/506 course, which counts towards the medical humanities minor.
Lectures take place on Tuesday evenings (5:30pm), with seminar-style classroom discussions for Rice students on Thursday afternoons (1:00-1:50pm). Below, please find the lecture dates, titles, speakers, and topics. Please email john.mulligan@rice.edu with any questions.
The History and Culture of Disease and Healing Fall 2018 Seminar Series
presented by UTHealth School of Public Health, Rice University and The Health Museum
Click for directions to the Health Museum
Theme: Poison, Plague, Potions and Portrayal
Seminars Dates: 8/29/2017 – 11/29/2017
8/29/2017
Chip Carson, MD, PhD
UTHealth School of Public Health - Southwest Center for Occupational & Environmental Health Associate Professor and Program Director of Occupational and Environmental Medicine Residency
Presentation Title: Lessons learned from the history of industrial medicine
Description: At the end of this session, attendees will be able to: (1) List historical turning points leading to improved workplace health and safety, (2) explain the linkage between disaster and progress, (3) recognize warning signs in public health.
9/5/2017
Clint Wilson III, MA, MSc
Rice University, PhD Candidate in English
Presentation Title: Toxic Agents: Poetry, Pollution, and Environmental Racism
Description: At the end of this session, attendees will be able to (1) understand how early twentieth-century artists understood “toxicity,” (2) grasp the interconnectedness of toxic exposures across the century, (3) engage with ideas of environmental racism that enabled the Flint Water Crisis and (4) explore how patients and victims of toxic exposure see their condition via major lead poisoning case study.
9/12/2017
Mary Ann Smith, PhD
UTHealth School of Public Health – Southwest Center for Occupational & Environmental Health, Assistant Professor in Epidemiology, Human Genetics and Environmental Science and Associate Dean of Students
Presentation Title: Panacea or Poison? A brief history of remedies and good intentions gone bad
Description: At the end of this session, attendees will be able to (1) describe how the FDA came into being and (2) give examples of remedies/drugs that caused unintended effects.
9/19/2017
Philip Lee Montgomery, MLIS, CA
Texas Medical Center Library, Head of McGovern Historical Center
Presentation Title: Quack medicine: selling hope for profit and glory
Description: At the end of this session, attendees will be able to (1) understand the concept of quack medicine in an historical context by examine artifacts and related health claims and (2) examine how the intersection of science and culture fosters opportunities for individuals to exploit health-related fears for profit and personal aggrandizement.
9/26/2017
Kirsten Ostherr, PhD, MPH
Rice University, Gladys Louise Fox Professor of English
Presentation Title: The Evolving Role of Patients in the New Sharing Economy of Medicine
Description: At the end of this session, attendees will be able to: (1) identify three inpatient or outpatient settings in which patients and clinicians can partner to improve patient care, (2) identify three actions patients can take to partner with clinicians and (3) identify three actions clinician can take to partner with patients.
10/3/2017
Robert Emery, DrPH, CHP, CIH, CBSP, CSP, CHMM, CPP, ARM
The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Vice President for Safety, Health, Environment & Risk Management, Professor of Occupational Health, UTHealth School of Public Health, Co-Director of the Prevention, Preparedness and Response (P2R) Academy
Presentation Title: Strategies for Correcting Health & Safety Misinformation
Description: At the end of this session, attendees will be able to (1) define “misinformation,” (2) understand why the issue is crucial to the health profession, (3) discuss strategies or techniques to correct misinformation and (4) access key references for this topic.
10/17/2017
Judith Roof, PhD
Rice University , Professor of English, Williams Shakespeare Chair of English
Presentation Title: Reading the Signs of the 1918 'Spanish' Influenza
Description: At the end of this session, attendees will be able to (1) describe and identify the different actors (U.S. government, army, medical professionals, citizens) who influenced the public discourse during and on the 1918 influenza and (2) analyze the discursive tactics of various media (advertisements, news reports, government issued warnings) published during the 1918 influenza epidemic. This lecture allows medical professionals to examine the often disastrous effects of the conflicting messages in public discourse during the 1918 influenza, and the continuing confusion the interplay of government, medical, and public knowledge can cause in contemporary health crises.
10/24/2017
Catherine Troisi, PhD
UTHealth School of Public Health, Associate Professor of Management, Policy and Community Health, and Epidemiology
Presentation Title: A History of Polio Virus Disease: Pools, Pioneers and Paradoxes
Description: At the end of this session, attendees will be able to (1) describe the epidemiology of polio, (2) summarize the effects of polio disease om mid-twentieth century USA, (3), understand challenges in eradicating polio and (4) describe the current state of the polio eradication campaign.
10/31/2017
Melissa Bailar, PhD
Rice University, Professor in the Practice of Humanities and the Associate Director of the Humanities Research Center
Presentation Title: The War on Rats: (Mis)representing the Bubonic Plague
Description: At the end of this session, attendees will be able to (1) know the history of the 1920 Galveston plague and (2) understand how representations of the plagues affect patient care and health protocols.
11/7/2017
Doug Tynan, PhD, ABPP
American Psychological Association, Director of Integrated Health Care
Presentation Title: ADHD in Kids & Dogs: Shall we medicate the terriers?
Description: At the end of this session, attendees will be able to (1) recall the history of the diagnosis of ADHD over the past 50 years, (2) comprehend the development of brain structures over time and its relationship to ADHD, (3) recall the ontogeny of activity level over the first 10 years of life, (4) appreciate the environmental context of the ADHD diagnosis.
11/14/2017
John Mulligan, PhD
Rice University, Lecturer, Humanities Research Center
Presentation Title: Hooked: Measuring Addictive Pleasure from Romanticism to Neoliberalism
Description: At the end of this session, attendees will be able to (1) provide a brief history of attempts to quantity addictive pleasure, from 1800 to the present, (2) understand critical frameworks that resent this drive to quantification as culpable in what we call "addiction” and (3) explore an alternative, non-pathologizing perspective on quantified pleasure, derived from aesthetic theory.
11/21/2017
Els Woudstra, MA
Rice University, Graduate Student, Department of English
Presentation Title: From Sainthood to Sickness: The Medicalization of Anorexia
Description: At the end of this session, attendees will be able to (1) analyze how popular and medical texts have historically represented and interpreted self-starvation, and list the process of its medicalization from the 17th century to today and (2) address the religious/mystical myth-making surrounding anorexia by medieval saints and contemporary on line 'pro-ana’ communities. This session provides physicians (and other attendees) the opportunity to become familiar with the historical background of the 'modem' disease of anorexia, and through its early religious interpretation and process of medicalization to gain a better understanding of the roots of the medicalization of anorexia, as well as the myth-making surrounding anorexia by members of online pro-eating disorder or 'pro-ana' communities.
11/29/2017
Niki Clements
Watt & Lilly Jackson Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies
Presentation Title: Medicalizing Melancholia: the Noonday Demon from Antiquity to the Present
1. To summarize a brief history of the treatment of depression (as melancholia), from antique philosophy to contemporary pharmacology.
2. To critically analyze the construction and perception of mental illness as specific to cultural context (as well as neurobiological phenomena)
3. To apply this historically-informed understanding of modern stigma in clinical settings to provide better care to patients with mental health issues