Building an Interdisciplinary Concentration in Health, Culture, and Societies
FAIN: AKA-279329-21
New College of Florida (Sarasota, FL 34243-2146)
Miriam L. Wallace (Project Director: September 2020 to present)
A one-year planning grant to enhance an interdisciplinary concentration in health, culture and society.
In a time of what some are calling a “double pandemic” of both a novel virus and ongoing disparities exacerbated by race, our understanding of health and wellness, illness and disease and their social intersections is entering a new era—one for which humanistic concerns are essential. New College of Florida has just launched an interdisciplinary Health, Culture, and Societies (HCS) “joint-disciplinary concentration” that bridges not only academic disciplines in scientific and humanistic fields, but also academic study and practical experience in the form of community engagement and professional internships. This new program responds to both an emerging field and to the need for a structured approach to an area of high student interest and community need.
Associated Products
‘Oh! death, death, death!’: Numbers and Emotion in Defoe’s Plague Year (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: ‘Oh! death, death, death!’: Numbers and Emotion in Defoe’s Plague Year
Author: Miriam L. Wallace
Abstract: Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year famously incorporates tables of rates of infection and numbers of deaths alongside first-person and second-hand reports of the 1665 plague in London. “The surprise ‘must-read’ for people facing the Covid-19 epidemic” (The Telegraph), myriad courses in Health Humanities have embraced Defoe’s work of creative nonfiction for teaching during a global contagion. The work itself fronts a kind of contagion of numbers and emotional outbursts that pit themselves against each other prefiguring the “two cultures” debates that our students inherit.
I’ll be teaching this work for the first time in an introductory and interdisciplinary co-taught course “Health, Culture, and Societies: Interdisciplinary Explorations” in fall 2022 alongside a Medical Anthropologist and an Epidemiologist, partnering with our local Multicultural Health Institute. My plan is to ask students to focus on specific tables Defoe gives that track deaths, illnesses, and burials in different parts of London in tandem with specific moments of highly emotional content. Together we’ll seek to articulate the kinds of knowledge these different approaches offer—one an example of early statistics, and the other more narrative and affective.
The Executive Director of the Multicultural Health Institute, herself a medical doctor, argues for getting students into the community, assisting in blood-pressure measurements, distributing health information, and listening to peoples’ health concerns. She’s been frank about seeing real people and hearing their everyday stories, rather than “all this theory and reading” and runs a Tuesday evening community update focused on transmission rates and demographics. By engaging with Defoe’s apparently distant text, which invites us to ask what we really know from quantitative rates and narrative accounts, we can begin to elucidate our own struggles to make sense of tables of infection rates and to attend to the stories we’ll hear from Black and b
Date: 02/18/2022
Conference Name: Southeast American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (SEASECS)
Health, Culture, and Societies: Interdisciplinary Explorations (Course or Curricular Material)Title: Health, Culture, and Societies: Interdisciplinary Explorations
Author: Kristopher Fennie
Author: Yidong Gong
Author: Miriam Wallace
Abstract: This course interrogates “health” and its relation to both cultures and societies from multiple perspectives across the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. We begin by asking what do we mean by health—is health something fixed across time and cultures or is it variable? Is health a property of an individual or something better thought of in terms of a community? Health is something we desire and understood as a “good,” but also sometimes imposed upon us as a moral imperative. Health may stand in for other socially desirable qualities: beauty, youth, racialized and gendered ideals. How do we measure and track health or wellness—for ourselves, for others, for our communities? How has health, well-being, illness, disease been understood and experienced in different places and different times? Topics to be explored include cross-historical and cross-cultural concepts of contagion, disease, illness, medicine, care, and healing; public health and health disparities; uses and misuses of data; health history and why history matters for thinking about and seeking health. This course is co-taught by multiple faculty and local experts and open to all students, though particularly addressed to students in their first 4 contracts. The class will work together on a wide range of content and regularly break into smaller ‘focus groups.’ There will be at least one off-campus assignment. Additional lectures and events related to class topics and careers will be offered and attendance at a set number may be expected. This course fulfills the “Introduction” requirement for the HCS joint-AOC or secondary field. Full Term Course.
Associated Term: Spring 2022
Registration Dates: Sep 06, 2021 to Jun 15, 2022
Levels: Undergraduate
Attributes: CYC - All, CYC Integrative Learning, CYC Critical Thinking, CYC Teamwork, First-Year Appropriate Course, Gender Studies Eligible, Health, Culture, and Societies, Humanities, Interdisciplinary Studies, Primarily Classroom Course
Year: 2022
Audience: Undergraduate
Professionalization Seminar for Health, Culture, and Societies (CRN 84631) (Course or Curricular Material)Title: Professionalization Seminar for Health, Culture, and Societies (CRN 84631)
Author: Miriam Wallace
Abstract: This intensive ISP is directed to students interested in learning more about health-related career options and professions—from the familiar (doctor, nurse, therapist, doula or midwife) to the less familiar (health information and health communication specialist, healthcare technology specialist, healthcare lawyer, medical illustrator, medical librarian, global health fieldwork and program director, editor for health or medical professional publications). This ISP fulfills the “Professionalization Seminar” requirement for the HCS-Joint AOC.
This ISP will include meeting with a range of health and health-adjacent professionals (including NCF alums!) to learn about their work, their preparation and education. We’ll be exploring together here!
Participants will be expected to attend regular meetings (some in person, some on zoom) with professionals and alumni/ae who will share their career experiences. Plan on meeting 3X in the first two or three weeks for up to 1.5 hours each, and then working independently to prepare your final project.
Some off-campus experiences may be included, schedules permitting. Some readings and website reviews will be required. A regular reflection journal is expected.
•Final project: choose a particular health-related career path, research it, and present to the group in the final week. We’ll share information about how to discover interesting career options, where to research them (including informational interviews), and a format for presentations.
Projections from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) show that healthcare jobs are expected to increase by 18% from 2016 through 2026.
Open to students at all levels.
Expect to spend time preparing for our meetings with visitors, and developing your Health Careers profile. Meeting 3 days weekly is likely.
Course will be offered in person, with some online portions (visits with experts).
Year: 2021
Audience: Undergraduate
“Exploring Health, Culture, and Societies Across the Disciplines” (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: “Exploring Health, Culture, and Societies Across the Disciplines”
Abstract: Event in "Campus Conversations" public seminar series (series funded with grant from Mellon Foundation): Open to campus and general public. Discussed and shared our process and learning preparing for a new class “Introduction to Health-Culture-Societies: Interdisciplinary Explorations” offered in Spring 2022. Reflected on the planning process and summer seminar funded by an NEH Humanities Connections Planning grant from June 2021-August 2022. Retired healthcare/mental
health workers, faculty, staff, and undergraduate students participated. 12 in audience
Author: Miriam Wallace
Author: Kris Fennie
Author: Maneesha Lal
Date: 10/21/2021
Location: Cook Hall, New College of Florida, Sarasota, FL.
“From Liberal Arts to Public Health” (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: “From Liberal Arts to Public Health”
Abstract: Event in "Campus Conversations" series directed to campus and general public (series funded by Mellon Foundation). Two New College alumni/ae speakers highlighted pathways from New College to working in health-related fields: one with an MPH working for a nonprofit in Nashville, TN that does “harm reduction” (from a Gender Studies concentration with a senior project on Queer Horror film!); the other is currently Senior Enterprise Project Manager at Moffit Cancer Center, and earned both a PMP and MBA, and ended up there with an UG concentration in English/Art History and prior work in museum preparation. Both told compelling personal and professional stories about how they discovered their current callings and what they love about their work--and offered career advice for current students and others.
Author: Emily Meyers
Author: Sam Armbruster
Author: Miriam Wallace
Date: 9/23/2021
Location: Virtual
Primary URL:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/campus-conversations-from-liberal-arts-to-public-health-tickets-169871818181Primary URL Description: EventBrite link to event with zoom link.