Introduction
If there is a web site out there that tries to
put law and literature and medicine together in one thought, I haven't found it.
What follows, therefore, is a collection of sites that are about "Law and
Literature" or "Medicine and Literature" or related topics.
"Law, Literature & Medicine" is a subset of
materials and questions that fall within the broader subjects of "Medicine and
Humanities" and "Law and Humanities." The most visible and
developed topic
within these subjects is medical ethics, and I have devoted a separate portion of this web
site to Bioethics - Web Resources. The links below focus
upon resources in history, literature, and the arts in general, not on medical ethics.
Please let me know if you know of any sites
that should be included here or out-dated links that should be updated or removed.
Medical Humanities
There are a handful of excellent Web sites
dedicated to Medicine and Humanities. The best place to start is the NYU School of Medicine's Medical Humanities
page. There you will find the Literature, Arts &
Medicine Database, including scores of annotations of literary sources. The main
page also has some useful links.
The Duke Center for the
Study of Medical Ethics and Humanities has some good on-line resources.
The web site for its April 2004 conference,
"Vital Lines,
Vital Signs: A Conference on Poetry and Medicine," looks good but is
short on resources. Perhaps after the conference they will post some papers.
Recent Dissertations in the Medical Humanities (project of the University of
Pittsburgh and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Health Sciences
Library Center)
Medical Humanities (BMJ
journal)
The President's Council
on Bioethics has a good
bookshelf -- currently featuring ten collections -- that includes a
broad assortment of readings drawn from "works of history, philosophy,
literature and religious meditation."
The Center for
Literature, Medicine, and the Health Care Professions
Poetry in
Healthcare: from The Poetry
Society
Compassion in Dying
Federation's "Craft of Empathy" training program
Double Take - Dr. Robert
Coles' literary/documentary journal; American Medical News had
a
good article about the journal and its debt to Bruce Springsteen in its
July 21, 2003, edition
Try the website
of Mahala Yates Stripling, Ph.D.; she offers some thought-provoking
material here.
Undergrad course at Brown described in
alumni magazine piece.
A nice series on physician-writers in the British
medical journal, The Lancet, including the following pieces (available
to nonsubscribers):
See also: syllabus
for "Language, Ethics & Medicine" at Cal-Berkeley
Medical Fiction Writers Seminar 2004 (if this link is broken, try
their home page)
Society for
Literature & Science
This is a membership organization that
publishes a journal three times a year and sponsors conferences from time
to time. You can visit the Society's homepage here,
and the on-line journal, Configurations, here.
Literature & Medicine (journal)
I don't know how long the essays will be
available for free, but quite a few selections from recent issues of Literature & Medicine are
available at that journal's web site.
Law & Literature
The pickings are slim, but there are a few sites
that suggest some of the scope of this field:
-
UT/Tarlton
Law Library
- Lawyers & Poetry: a great starting
point is Professor James Elkins' web site, "Strangers
to Us All"
- Professor Elkins' site also includes
some interesting essays and other materials on law and literature
(writ large and small):
- Georgetown University's Online Books Page has links to
"works in electronic format that appear frequently on reading lists for Law and
Literature classes."
- The University of Virginia offers a joint-degree program in Law and
Literature (M.A./J.D.).
- "Law,
Literature & Film," Lynne Viti (Wellesley College)
- Quite a few "Law & Literature" teachers have
posted their syllabi on-line. Here are a few examples:
-
Famous Trials - a web site maintained by Doug Linder
- Law
and Culture - links on my Law and Law Schools resource page
- John F. Kennedy's
dedication speech for the Frost Library at Amherst College on
October 26, 1963, provides an interesting perspective on the interplay
between literature (and poetry in particular) and politics (and
therefore law).
-
Legal Fiction
Writers Seminar 2004 (if this link is broken, try their
home page)
History of Medicine
There are quite a few good sources for materials
on the history of medicine. An interesting site contains thousands of historical
images: History of Medicine Division of the
U.S. National Library of Medicine. The materials are pretty dispersed at U.C.L.A.'s History and
Special Collections Division of the Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library, but it is
worth the time it takes to follow the links through their on-line collections. See
also the University of Washington's Department
of Medical History and Ethics web site.
Poetry
It is amazing how many really good poetry sites
have popped up on the Web in the past few years. Some of the better ones
are listed on my Poetry &
Art web resources
page.
There are a couple of good ways to search the web for the
poetry resources you are looking for:
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This page is the
sole responsibility of Tom Mayo, not Southern
Methodist University.
Please  your
comments.
Last
updated:
02 September 2004
|
23 Mar 1999
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