Medical Humanities
Richard N. Raspa, Ph.D.
Associate Director for Humanities
Professor and Graduate Chair
Department of Interdisciplinary Studies
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
tel.: (313) 577-6578
e-mail: aa2267@wayne.edu
Richard Raspa’s research interests are interdisciplinary and include folklore, literature, narrative and organizational theory, and medical humanities. Raspa has published 5 books, one of which, co-authored with an anthropologist, Italian Folktales in America: The Verbal Art of an Immigrant Woman, received an international award, the Botkin Prize, from the American Folklore Society, for the best first book in the field of folklore. He has published his research on chaos theory in European drama, on organizations such as General Motors and Dominos, on entrepreneurs, such as Donald Trump and Ted Turner, and on Abraham Maslow’s Relevance to Palliative care. He has contributed chapters to books in folklore, literature, narrative, organizational and medical cultures. A Fulbright recipient to Italy and an Ellsworth Fellow, he has presented papers at national and international conferences in all five fields. He has been a keynote speaker at international conferences, including a world conference on organizational culture in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Every fall, he teaches the China Study Trip which brings Wayne State University students to China to make on-site visits to Chinese organizations. In the summer, he has begun to bring WSU medical students to China for a total immersion course in traditional Chinese healing. In 2005, he was appointed Associate Director for Humanities at the Center to Advance Palliative-Care Excellence, at the WSU. Currently he is collaborating with Dr. Rob Zalenski on a series of articles on medical humanities. He has twice received the highest teaching award at Wayne State University, the Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1987 and 2005.
Interdisciplinary Curriculum
ISP 5500/7500 Medical Humanities, is a course Dr. Raspa teaches every year with Dr. Rob Zalenski, Director of the Center to Advance Palliative-Care Excellence at WSU, open to medical students, graduate and undergraduate IS students, and students from other colleges across campus. The study of Humanities deepens medical practice, evoking the human dimensions of disease. Humanities represent, among other things, the ways human beings in different times and places struggle with physical and psychological crises.
ISP 7210 End-of-Life Stories, an interdisciplinary studies course Raspa collaboratively developed and continues to teach in the End-of-Life course, cross-listed with 5 departments: Anthropology, Honors, Nursing, Sociology, Information Science. The course explores death and dying as cultural and story constructions as well as biological phenomena.
ISP 4700/7500 China Study Trip, is a study of innovation in American and Chinese culture. We explore innovation as a narrative process that arises out of root metaphors in a society. Texts include literature, folklore, film, and art. The last two weeks of the course are spent in China, making on site-visits to Chinese organizations in Beijing and Shanghai.
Chinese Culture Medicine
ISP 4700/7500 CHINA STUDY TRIP is a study of innovation in American and Chinese culture. We explore innovation as a narrative process that arises out of root metaphors in a society. Texts include literature, folklore, film, and art. The last two weeks of the course are spent in China, in Hangzhou, taking courses at Zhejiang University, and in Beijing and Shanghai, making on site-visits to Chinese organizations.