title: Innovation Through Tradition: Rediscovering the "Humanist" in the Medical Humanities.
abstract: Throughout its fifty-year history, the role of the medical humanist and even the name "medical humanities" has remained raw, dynamic and contested. What do we mean when we call ourselves "humanists" and our practice "medical humanities?" To address these questions, we turn to the concept of origin narratives. After explaining the value of these stories, we focus on one particularly rich origin narrative of the medical humanities by telling the story of how a group of educators, ethicists, and scholars struggling to define their relatively new field rediscovered the studia humanitatis, a Renaissance curriculum for learning and teaching. Our origin narrative is composed of two intertwined stories-the history of the studia humanitatis itself and the story of the scholars who rediscovered it. We argue that as an origin narrative the studia humanitatis grounds the medical humanities as both an engaged moral practice and pedagogical project. In the latter part of the paper, we use this origin narrative to show how medical humanists working in translational science can use their understanding of their historical roots to do meaningful work in the world.
authors.affiliation: Alzheimer's Association - Houston & Southeast Texas Chapter, 6055 South Loop East, Houston, TX, 77087, USA. jkutac@alz.org.
authors.forename: Julie
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5763-7377
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kutac
authors.affiliation: Institute for the Medical Humanities, University of Texas Medical Branch, 301 University Blvd, Galveston, TX, 77555-1311, USA.
authors.forename: Rimma
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Osipov
authors.affiliation: Institute for Translational Sciences, University of Texas Medical Branch, 301 University Blvd, Galveston, TX, 77555-0342, USA.|Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy, Baylor College of Medicine, One Baylor Plaza, Suite 310D, MS420, Houston, TX, 77030, USA.
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Childress
mesh_terms: D003479:Curriculum; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006809:Humanities / Q000193:education* / Q000266:history*
keywords: History of medicine; Medical humanities; Origin narrative; Renaissance humanism; Rhetoric; Translational science