Abstract
What might the Victorians have to say that would be of use to current pre-health students from America? And why would such a conversation necessarily be couched in terms of narrative? This project attempts to answer such questions in the context of a newly designed, six-week study abroad program from the University of Florida that brings undergraduates to London and Edinburgh. Entitled “Health Disparities and Health Charities,” the program serves students who are interested in the relationship between past health inequities and current health policy. I use this program as a case study to explore pedagogical techniques for building connections between the catastrophic epidemics, pervasive endemics, and changing etiologies of disease in the nineteenth century and current views towards health policy in the wake of COVID-19. Students create narratives about the changing time and space of disease over the last several centuries, but also analyze how the Victorians created their own narratives of disease and how these compare to current narratives. They design multimodal “Thick Maps” that examine current health practices as a continuation of the geographical spaces and demographics of the past. Beyond the context of study abroad programs, I suggest that current students, even in pre-professional programs that often minimize the study of the humanities, can benefit from examining their disciplines through historical contexts and specifically through the analysis and creation of narrative, which as Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of the chronotope informs us, must necessarily involve the study of time and space.
Presenters
Darby Wood WaltersAssistant Instructional Professor, Writing Program, University of Florida, Florida, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Past and Present in the Humanistic Education
KEYWORDS
Pedagogy, Victorian, Medicine, Time, Space, Chronotope, Study Abroad, Mapping
