ASU Health Humanities founder to lead new humanities integrations for ASU Health
Leadership transition strengthens ties between the humanities and medical education
In 2014, ASU English professor Cora Fox and Sally Kitch, founding director of the Humanities Institute, launched the Health Humanities initiative to connect and support faculty exploring the intersections of health, health care and the human body through the lens of the humanities.
“She asked if I would head up the initiative as associate director of the institute, and although I didn’t know how clearly my own research was converging with this subfield at the time, I had a citizen’s interest in improving health care, so I signed on,” Fox says.
“As soon as I began to engage with the national and international interdisciplinary community working in this area, I knew I had found my academic home.”
The initiative has grown over the past 12 years, promoting research and interdisciplinary collaborations that address health as a cultural idea, value and practice. Among its achievements, Health Humanities has contributed to NEH grants and hosted international experts and scholars, such as Brian Hurwitz and Michael Donaldson, who have helped shaped the field's many directions.
Now, Fox is stepping down as co-director to bring the expertise she developed through her work at the institute to ASU Health as director of humanities integrations and new associate dean of Health Humanities in the School of Medicine and Advanced Medical Engineering that will open next year, pending accreditation by LCME.
“We are implementing an exciting vision for humanities training at the core of this medical curriculum and ASU Health. We want physicians and other health care professionals to be fully informed leaders and carers, practicing with knowledge of the historical, cultural and ethical challenges ahead as we develop technologies and new approaches to improving health — ready to bring the creativity fostered in the arts and humanities to their advocacy and entrepreneurship, as well as their own flourishing in their clinical practice. The humanities can be a force for supporting good work at this time of urgent need.”
In her role as the director of humanities integrations, Fox will create institutional bridges between scholarly work in all the fields of the humanities as well as the arts, research, health profession training, and community partnerships that will be the focus of ASU Health.
As Fox transitions into her new roles this fall, Annika Mann, who has been acting as co-director since 2023, will lead the Health Humanities initiative. She brings significant expertise in narrative medicine and disability studies to the role, and she will be working with Fox to co-develop programming between the institute and ASU Health.
“Although I am sorry to be stepping away a bit from a community of scholars I value, there is no other faculty member on campus more well-qualified to carry on this work than Dr. Mann. I am very excited to work with her as ASU Health develops.”
This academic year, the Health Humanities initiative is excited to host events that center humanities-based research on the topic of health, highlighting scholarship that explores the politics of representations of health and illness as well histories of care, both in and out of the hospital.
The central mission of the Health Humanities initiative is to guide and support public discussions about health equity, justice and access. In honor of that mission, this fall, the Health Humanities initiative will co-sponsor events featuring scholars in the fields of disability studies and bicultural studies.