Florida State University will host the Arts-Health-Humanities Symposium VI on Tuesday, Feb. 10, at the Claude Pepper Center. The event is part of FSU’s Festival of the Creative Arts and aims to highlight ongoing research and encourage interdisciplinary collaborations among faculty and students from various fields such as design, medicine, music education, music therapy, and musicology.
The symposium will feature Tana Jean Welch, associate professor of medical humanities at FSU. Welch specializes in contemporary American poetry and medical humanities. Her work demonstrates how creative writing can support individuals working in high-stress medical environments.
“Poetry’s use of blank space, collage, ambiguity, and fragmented language echoes our embodied experience in many ways,” Welch said. “The meaning of a poem, just like the meaning of a body, can shift from reader to reader or from day to day — in this way, poetry can be a truer representation of the body and bodily health. The way we feel in our bodies — emotionally, physically, psychologically — is constantly changing as our bodies encounter other bodies. Poetry provides space for variation.”
Welch teaches literature and writing courses at FSU and directs the Chapman Humanities and Arts in Medicine Program (CHAMP), which brings arts and humanities programming to enhance the environment at the College of Medicine. She also serves as managing editor for “HEAL: Humanism Evolving through Arts and Literature,” a journal where doctors, students, and patients contribute stories about their experiences with medicine.
“Creative and reflective writing is important for anyone in any field,” Welch said. “It is a critical thinking tool — the act of writing can reveal hitherto unknown knowledge and emotions. Searching for the right words forces us to think deeper. This can be quite valuable in the medical profession.”
Welch explained that poetry has an important role in expressing aspects of health that are difficult to communicate by other means: “Poetry’s purpose is to express the ineffable, to say what cannot be said any other way. There is much about our health that is difficult to communicate, including what pain feels like… Poetry can bring us that much closer to feeling what someone else is feeling… Poetry can help us articulate the complexity of life and help us change the language we use to construct conditions of health and illness.”
She also discussed her concept of “the human entanglement,” stating: “It is impossible to maintain opposition or separation between the human body and everything else… Health is also not independent from economics or politics… Recognition of our bodily entanglement reduces emphasis placed on individual choice… while also encouraging us to acknowledge our kinship with all others.” Welch noted this understanding helps move toward true health equity.
Quoting Dr. Rita Charon on narrative medicine’s value for clinicians’ self-reflection: “‘When health professionals write… about clinical experiences… they as a matter of course discover aspects… that… were not evident.’” Welch added that HEAL publishes narratives by patients as well as providers so students gain broader perspectives on healthcare experiences.
Media interested in learning more about medical humanities or covering these topics may contact Tana Jean Welch at tana.welch@med.fsu.edu.
