Body image and the innocent eye

Abstract

This paper describes the development, content, teaching experience, and impact of the course "The body image in medicine and the arts" which is offered annually in a one-month format for medical students and other upper division students at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC). Literature, photography, art, anthropology, art history, cultural studies, feminism, modernism, and medicine are all employed in the course as a way of encouraging students to consider the broader cultural interpretations of the human body. Any medical humanities instructor wishing to explore new ideas and themes related to teaching students about past and present body image issues and their impact on contemporary biomedical culture can gain insight through an overview of this course. The purpose of the course is to allow medical students a forum for talking more personally and metaphorically about the body as a cultural concept. The teaching faculty involved in this course believe that the majority of students who participate in this class complete it more acutely aware than before of the fact that no single human being, even a "good, caring" doctor, can see with an "innocent eye". The accomplishment of this goal alone justifies faculty participation in the course.