4th Literature & Medicine Summer Institute draws participants from across the country

• “It was informative, stimulating, occasionally truly transforming.”
• “The Institute was challenging and fulfilled my expectations and more.”
• “I really enjoyed it. There were some great discussions.”
• —Comments from 2006 Institute
  Participant, Evaluations

Thanks to support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, health care professionals, scholar/ facilitators and humanities council staff new to the Literature & Medicine program from 13 states learned how to implement the program at our 4th Summer Institute. Arizona, Delaware, Florida and Hawai’i, all new state partners, were among the states represented.

Participants at the 2006 Lit & Med Summer Institute

Since the program began in Maine over ten years ago, Literature & Medicine has grown through a network of state humanities councils, private non-profits in each state that are affiliated with the National Endowment for the Humanities. Humanities councils promote and support the humanities in their respective states; many offer public reading and discussion-based programs like Lit & Med. Each of the partner Lit & Med councils works closely with individual health care facilities to organize the program, providing guidance, technical support and, in some cases, limited financial support. In short, the humanities councils make it as easy as possible for health care facilities to host a program.

The Literature & Medicine Institutes give all those new to Literature & Medicine a clear understanding of the program and how to implement it. As with past Institutes, potential scholars, health care professionals organizing the program within their institutions (whom we call liaisons) and humanities council staff attending the 2006 Institute received:

• a thorough overview of the program’s structure and its goals;
• a variety of ways to approach facilitating the program, and experience for potential facilitators in actually leading a Literature & Medicine discussion;
• guidance in selecting readings;
• clear instruction on the process for successful implementation of the program within hospitals and other health care facilities, including an understanding of the roles of the scholar, the liaison and the council staff;
• an introduction to our on-line annotated bibliography;
• a valuable network of colleagues to draw upon for questions, best practices and reading recommendations.

In addition, each liaison and council staff member was given a copy of our Lit & Med manual outlining the process of organizing the program in a health care facility.

Mark Schenker (CT), Lucy Honig (MA), Laurie Quinn (ME) and John Zavodny (ME)—all strong Literature & Medicine facilitators—served as faculty for the Institute. The three days combined small group discussions, plenary sessions and special presentations. Susan Bell, Professor of Sociology & Anthropology at Bowdoin, gave a talk on the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment and how she has approached this topic with L&M groups, while on another evening, faculty member John Zavodny led a band of brave volunteers in a Medical Readers’ Theater performance.

Because of the Institutes, we now have a strong core group of health care professionals, scholars and humanities council staff across the country who share similar goals, are supportive of one another and are part of a growing, vital Literature & Medicine community.

For more information, please contact Lizz Sinclair, the Program Officer for Literature & Medicine at MHC.

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