NOTE: Course information changes frequently, including Methods of Instruction. Please revisit these pages periodically for the most recent and up-to-date course information.

This workshop provides an intense immersion in the methods and skills of narrative medicine. Lectures will open up themes of how stories work, creativity, ethics, bearing witness, and empathy, while the small groups practice rigorous skills in close reading, creative writing, and responding to the writings of others. The learning objectives of the workshops are to 1) provide personal contact to introduce and solidify intersubjective relationships among participants; 2) to ignite use of methods that have been and will be utilized in the on-line component, e.g., writing to prompts from literary texts and responding to both form and content of colleagues’ writing; 3) plenary lectures from the architects of the discipline of Narrative Medicine in the foundational theories to be studied; 4) scheduled cultural learning opportunities of New York City (music, museums, literary readings) for shared creative experiences; 5) contact with Master of Science in Narrative Medicine graduate program for certification participants toward their understanding of the breadth of the field and the potential for their continuing to study NM after the CPA; 6) introduction to the national and international reach of Columbia Narrative Medicine so that participants grasp the value and magnitude of the community they have entered as certification program students. Participants will be given the chance to present their own works-in-progress to assembled participants and faculty as a jump-start to collaborative projects during and after the participation in the certification program.