Center for Medical Humanities

The UCI Center for Medical Humanities explores dimensions of human embodiment, especially those that relate to illness, disability, and other experiences of bodyminds. An institutional collaboration between the School of Medicine, School of Humanities, and the Claire Trevor School of the Arts, the Center brings together faculty and student scholars, clinicians and policy makers, and key community stakeholders to explore the arcs of living and dying and everything in between from a range of disciplinary perspectives. These perspectives span from the creative and performative arts, textual and visual representations, systems of belief and philosophical orientations, to clinical practice and health sciences. The Center’s scope also takes up questions of stigma and other social pressures on those considered differently abled. This commitment to broad forms of human vulnerability enables deeper appreciation of the ways by which people, communities and spaces make meaning out of different experiences of embodiment, of their own and of others. The Center promotes research and creative activity, supports teaching and learning, and sustains engagement between the campus and the diverse communities served by UCI in the southern California region.