Master's Program Course Descriptions

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MHB 401: Foundations of Bioethics
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This course will explore the major theories in contemporary bioethics. Participants will learn the history and the application of principlism, casuistry, care ethics, virtue ethics, narrative ethics, pragmatism, and communitarianism.
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MHB 402: Medicine & Law
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Using judicial opinions as our primary text, this course analyzes how the U.S. legal system mediates conflicts between individuals and the State, parents and children, and doctors and patients in areas like abortion, termination of life support, physician assisted suicide, human experimentation and cross-cultural conflict in medicine.
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MHB 403: The History of Medicine
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This course will explore major events and trends in the history of European and American health care and medical ethics. Participants will investigate primary and secondary literature and will learn to contextualize current-day medical events through critical historical thinking.
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MHB 404: Literature & Medicine
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This course surveys the uses of literature and literary theory in understanding the culture(s) of medicine and bioethics. The first half focuses on literature and ethics and interpretation as an ethical act; the second focuses on narratives as a way of knowing in medicine and in bioethics.
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MHB 405: Social Science & Medicine
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This course examines the ethnography of moral issues in Western medicine, the social science critique of American bioethics, and the manner in which the social sciences can contribute to the understanding of ethical problems in the clinical setting.
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MHB 406: The Practice of Bioethics
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This course will provide an introduction to the practices of bioethics consultation and bioethics mediation. The central focus of the course will be the practical application of bioethical theory in the clinical context.
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MHB 407: Special Topics in Medical Humanities & Bioethics

This course is a weekly series of hour-long lectures on topics in bioethics and the medical humanities not covered by other courses in the curriculum. These lectures are delivered by various faculty members, each one presenting a series of about three lectures on topics in which they specialize. These lectures are presented once per week throughout the Fall, Winter, & Spring quarters and are only 50 minutes in length. Students must attend all three quarters to receive course credit, which is one unit. This course is taken twice, typically in the first and second year. There is only one series per year, so both first & second-year MA students will attend the same lectures. These are also open to the public, so expect to see some new faces. View the Lecture Series schedule.