Last month we launched a new book series, Connective Tissue, dedicated to the health
humanities with a focus on narrative medicine. The series is edited by writer and scholar Renée K. Nicholson, MFA, former director of the Humanities Center at West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia. Connective Tissue seeks to provide a range of books for clinicians, artists, writers, scholars, and others to more fully engage with health humanities, narrative medicine, and art in medicine. As the field of health humanities programs in narrative medicine grows, so does the need for a literature that includes creative works, critical theoretical work, and, importantly, hybrids of the two as it relates to health, illness, medicine, and related subjects. “I’m excited to see how the Connective Tissue Series will create an intentional venue for work that explores the breadth and depth of the health humanities, art in medicine, and narrative medicine,” says Nicholson.

Health humanities, sometimes referred to as medical humanities, study the intersection of health, fine arts, and humanistic disciplines (such as philosophy, religion, history, literature), including social science research that provides insight into the human condition (fields such as anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies). As a concept and intellectual pursuit, the medical humanities first started making waves in the 1960s as medical professionals pushed back against a dehumanizing curricula and sought to emphasize the humanity of the patient. Today there are over 140 undergraduate programs in health humanities, along with graduate and certificate programs.

Narrative medicine, one of the best-known health humanities approaches, has developed principles and practices that equip clinicians to better comprehend their patients’ experiences and perspectives so as to deliver equitable and effective health care, while also engaging with writers, artists, scholars, activists, and human services professionals of all kinds, to improve healthcare outcomes for both patients and providers. The first narrative medicine program was established at Columbia University in 2001.

This is Nicholson’s path to health humanities, in her own words:

“In early 2014, I got a call from a palliative care physician who was looking for a creative writer. I thought it was the oddest request. What physician needed a creative writer?” she wondered. “At the time, I was six years out of my MFA and was an assistant professor in the
Multidisciplinary Studies program at WVU. My first book of poems would be coming out later that year. So, I’d been doing the kind of stuff you’d expect from someone trying to make it as a professor-writer. But this call would take my career in a whole different direction.”

“The palliative care physician had a patient who had ALS, which is both degenerative and has
no cure. The physician told me that often these patients had concerns about death, about pain, leaving loved ones, and so on. But his current patient had one concern that was different. How was he going to finish his memoir? The physician asked if I could help his patient. I told him I didn’t know if I could help him—I’d never done something like this before—but I certainly wanted to meet him.”

“For just under ten months, I would go to this patient’s house a few times every week to work on his book with him. While I was doing this, I kept doing Google searches to see who else had done things like this, and each time I would end up at the webpage for the Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University. I was one of the first people admitted to the online Certificate of Professional Achievement in Narrative Medicine at Columbia. I finished my certificate in 2019, and recently was the recipient of a fellowship from the West Virginia Humanities Council to continue my scholarship in narrative medicine.”

“In 2021, I published a book with the WVU Press, Fierce and Delicate: Essays on Dance and Illness that I consider part of my narrative medicine journey. I’m currently a contributing writer to Synapsis: A Journal of Health Humanities, where I write about a variety of health humanities subjects, and am one of the creative partners in Healthcare Is Human, a Martinsburg, WV-based nonprofit organization dedicated to authentic storytelling in healthcare.”

“One of the exciting aspects of Connective Tissue was reaching out to colleagues to put
together our advisory board for the series. I’m so lucky to be working with so many leaders in
the field. Each is a leader in a field or subfield that relates to what Connective Tissue seeks to
accomplish, which is to provide a range of books for clinicians, artists, writers, scholars and
others to more fully engage with health humanities, narrative medicine, and art in medicine. As more and more researchers, scholars, educators, and others bring this work into clinics,
professional education, graduate and undergraduate education and other venues, the need for a growing literature to address the various aspects of the field became apparent to me, and the advisory board.”

“One of the most important aspects of Connective Tissue, for me, is that it honors the stories
from healthcare—whether from patients, caregivers, health professionals, or others. To me, if
we can create works that provide help and hope to others, that help train the next generations of health professionals, and that help current providers with burnout, then we will have created something truly special.”

Renée K. Nicholson, MFA, holds a Certificate of Professional Achievement in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University, is a contributing writer for Synapsis: A Journal of Health Humanities, and is a creative partner in the art and storytelling initiative Healthcare Is Human. For her work with patients with ALS, cancer, and HIV, she was the recipient of the 2018 Susan S. Landis Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts from the West Virginia Division of Arts, Culture, and History, and her narrative medicine work has been supported by the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation, the West Virginia Clinical and Translational Science Institute, the West Virginia Humanities Council, the West Virginia Commission on the Arts, and others.

Renée is the author of Fierce and Delicate: Essays on Dance and Illness, co-editor of the award-winning anthology Bodies of Truth: Personal Narratives of Illness, Disability, and Medicine, and two collections of poetry. She is a frequent speaker on health humanities; is active in the Narrative Medicine Alumnx group at Columbia; is a member of Narrative Mindworks, the Association for Interdisciplinary Studies and the Health Humanities Consortium; and is currently serving as Health Humanities Research Consultant at the University of Colorado Health Sciences.

 

Series Advisors:
 Christine Bentley, PhD, Professor of Art History, Missouri Southern State University,
Visiting Scholar, Visual Arts in Healthcare Program, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
 Brooke DiGiovanni Evans, EdM, Director of the Visual Arts in Healthcare Program,
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
 Joel T. Katz, M.D., M.A.C.P, Senior Vice President for Education at Dana-Farber Cancer
Institute and founding director of the Visual Arts in Healthcare program at Brigham and
Women’s Hospital
 Derek McCracken, M.S., M.A., 2023 Faculty Fellow in the School of Professional Studies
and a Lecturer in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University
 Kathryn Rhine, PhD, Associate Professor and Director of the Arts & Humanities in
Healthcare Program, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
 Michael P.H. Stanley, MD, Tufts Medical Center, Department of Neurology, Director of
the Neurocognitive Division, Assistant Professor, Tufts University School of Medicine