Dr. Rita Charon Named the 2018 Jefferson Lecturer in the Humanities
ICLS affiliated faculty, Rita Charon, scholar, physician, and originator of the burgeoning field of narrative medicine, will deliver the 2018 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities. A Harvard-trained physician with a PhD in English literature, Charon is the founding Chair and Professor of Medical Humanities and Ethics and Professor of Medicine at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center. The new department is home to the discipline of narrative medicine, which seeks to improve patient care by putting the act of storytelling at the heart of medical practice. Medical students and health care professionals in the program learn from models of literature, creative writing, and literary theory how to elicit and interpret patients’ stories in order to treat the whole person.
