MA in Humanities, Health & Medicine

The field of Humanities, Health, and Medicine, which can also be referred to as the Medical and Health Humanities, explores and advances relationships between the humanities, arts, and social sciences on the one hand and health and health care on the other. The content and methods of humanistic disciplines have the power to transform health care for all by enhancing human connections, deepening the capacity for empathy, and improving our understanding of the cultural and social contexts in which health, illness, and care occur. At the same time, focusing on health and health care reveals new relevance for humanistic scholarship and teaching in a society increasingly dominated by STEM fields. Several books offer excellent overviews of the field, including Health Humanities Reader, Medical Humanities: An Introduction, and Research Methods in Health Humanities.

The MA-HHM program is a good fit for anyone excited about intersections of humanities, health, and medicine who also wishes to hone their skills as writers, researchers, and critical thinkers while gaining a Master of Arts degree from the University of Texas at Austin. 

The program is designed in particular, however, for three specific audiences:

• Students considering applications to health professional school but who also have interests in the humanities, arts, or humanistic social sciences. The health professions increasingly recognize the importance of humanistic knowledge and skills for expanding providers’ capacity to offer empathic and context-sensitive patient care, as well as to enhance their own self-care, self-reflection, and resilience. Indeed, many medical schools now view a record of sustained interest and accomplishment in the liberal arts as a “plus factor” in admissions.
• Students who wish to explore the special forms of significance that humanistic disciplines gain when pursued in the contexts of health, healing, and health care. Such students may ultimately choose to use their MA in Humanities, Health, and Medicine as a bridge to PhD programs in any number of humanities disciplines, including the medical humanities themselves.
• Students, including those who may already have substantial professional experience, who wish to bring humanistic knowledge, skills, and frameworks to the health care sector, whether as care providers, researchers, policy advocates, consultants, or administrators.

The interdisciplinary nature of Humanities, Health, and Medicine, along with the MA program’s combination of structure and flexibility, gives students the ability to design, in collaboration with the HHM program’s Graduate Adviser, a coherent program of study that matches their own interests, desires, and post-degree goals. Although the HHM program is housed in the University of Texas Humanities Institute, eligible courses and participating faculty can be found across the UT-Austin campus, including in the College of Liberal Arts, the Moody College of Communications, Dell Medical School, the Steve Hicks School of Social Work, the School of Nursing, the School of Information, and the School of Education among other campus units.

If you have questions or would like additional information, please send an email to HHM@austin.utexas.edu. Personal consultations with the Graduate Advisor are also available upon request.