This paper explores the benefits reading and writing medical poetry can benefit preprofessional/medical students, physicians, and patients as a means to share the experiences they
encounter in the medical world. The concept for this paper originates from the idea of narrative
medicine as a way to foster relationships between physicians and patients through the sharing of
stories, or narratives, between the two parties. In efforts to help teach this skill, universities and
medical schools have begun to offer courses in the medical humanities. The goal of these courses
is to teach students how to develop the skills they need to empathize and learn from their
patients’ experiences. Paired with the traditional rigor of a science-based curriculum, the medical
humanities have become part of medical schools’ efforts to “train the whole physician.”
Medical poetry is an example of the types of humanities courses that can benefit students
interested in medicine. The history of medical poetry spans across decades of literary history.
Beginning with the early references of medicine from the ancient world to the contemporary
work of the present, poets of different backgrounds and histories are discussed. Research to
support the efficacy of medical poetry include studies done on how medical poetry has impacted
students, readers, and patients. Finally, the author’s experiences as both a pre-professional
student and patient are shared to further explore the benefits that reading, and writing can bring.

This thesis is an experiment in confessional academic writing, an attempt to read two surrealist texts closely and critically while simultaneously employing creative, lyrical prose and narration. The thesis, in both style and content, has bridged the realms of academic and creative writing in order to fully embody the concepts explored within: abstractions of the self, how abstracted selves interact with space, and how such abstractions lead to an ever-evolving and contactable conceptualization of personhood. Further, the thesis explores and reaches for a submergence of selves into space and other abstracted selves while grappling with and resisting against the occasional failure of language and spatial experience, which leads to a detrimental distance between the self and its experience in the world. Surrealism's advocacy for blind submission, for indulging the dream and embracing dream-like modes of appearance, and for locating an unconscious and automatic medium for expression (as seen in André Breton's first Surrealist Manifesto in 1924 and his 1928 novel Nadja) licenses an understanding of being that allows for multidimensional embodiment through one's presence and absence and through indistinctions between the self and space. The thesis recognizes and works through potentially problematic power dynamics within such notions of possession and dispossession while articulating a full faithfulness in the imagination's ability to uncover expansive personhood and the ways this kind of personhood is more wholly enabled to authentically and productively connect the disparity between persons, space, language, and reality. While analytical and textually supported, and accompanied by a photo essay that explores the aforementioned concepts visually, this thesis indulges in poetic impulses and offers a critical and personal investigation on being which allows us to consider ourselves as things that are endlessly becoming.

Abolitionist activism in 1850's America was divided among two groups of thought: disunionists, who understood the American Constitution to be a pro-slavery document, and political abolitionists, who believed the Constitution was antislavery. This paper traces the origins and structures of each argument, specifically focusing on the philosophies of Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison. It supplements their views with the works of other prominent abolitionists such as Lysander Spooner, Wendell Phillips and Gerrit Smith. In analyzing their rhetoric and beliefs, this paper examines the core of the contention between disunionists and political abolitionists and asserts that the chief divide between the two groups involved questions of whether the wording of the Constitution supported slavery, whether the drafters of the Constitution intended the document to condone slavery, and whether the intentions of the Constitution could be divorced from its interpretation at the hands of the American government and public. Furthermore, this paper argues that the conflict between disunionists and political abolitionists is not confined to the pages of history. It makes parallels between modern activism and the abolitionist writings of the 1850's, attempting to show that the same anti-Constitution reasoning of the disunionists permeates many present-day activists and scholars. It presents Frederick Douglass, Wendell Phillips and Gerrit Smith as proponents of a philosophy of radical constitutionalism which supports legal and cultural reform grounded in a respect for the ideals they believed were embedded within the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. This paper advocates constitutional radicalism as the most just and effective method of American reform, echoing Douglass in his faith in American idealism and the power of law and civic duty to promote national justice.