A Message from Director Eileen Anderson
The Medicine, Society and Culture (MSC) concentration within the Master of Arts in Bioethics and Medical Humanities degree program gives students a unique opportunity to explore how influences beyond biology directly affect health and well-being. The one-year degree draws on realms from law to social work and anthropology to ethics to explore ways that we define and understand illness, recovery, compassion and more.
Because the issues involved are so wide-ranging, we encourage students to shape their degree paths to align with their interests—even as we provide intellectual grounding in a set of foundational courses. We also include clinical rotations so you can see immediately how classroom concepts can play out in practice.
The deeply interdisciplinary nature of the degree gives it relevance to a broad array of students. Some plan to pursue careers in health care, and will enroll to learn more about the roles of the humanities and social sciences in shaping the perspectives of providers and patients alike. Others will enroll to learn more about specific subjects as they consider potential areas for doctoral studies. And many will join us without concrete outcomes already in mind, driven instead by longstanding academic interests in one or many areas that we will study.
All are welcome; the more diverse our students, the greater the opportunity to benefit from their perspectives and experiences.
I encourage you to explore the pages of this website to see all that we have to offer. If you have questions not answered here, please don’t hesitate to contact us at epa5@case.edu.
Eileen Anderson, EdD
Director, Medicine, Society & Culture
Associate Professor of Bioethics
Adjunct Associate Professor of Psychiatry
School of Medicine
Case Western Reserve University
Assistant Research Anthropologist
Center for Culture and Health
Semel Institute for Neuroscience
UCLA