The Master of Arts in Medical Humanities and Bioethics program presents
A Montgomery Lecture
with
Tod Chambers, PhD
Associate Professor, Medical Education
Faculty, Medical Humanities and Bioethics Graduate Program
Member, Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine
The Medical Humanities as Equipment
Most discussions of the relationship between literature and medicine comment either on the way medicine is represented within the text or on how reading the text will foster empathy in the reader. In this presentation, it will be argued that an application of Kenneth Burke’s notion of literature as “equipment for living” provides a powerful, alternative technique for making the humanities a practical tool for the lives of health care professionals. In this perspective literature can furnish health care professionals with ways to encompass, understand, and respond to commonly experienced and morally complex situations.