Our Team
The Medhum team is a diverse collective of physicians, scholars, and healthcare professionals. Many were former editors of the Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database. Through storytelling, critical inquiry, and creative expression, the team explores how medicine connects with culture and the arts, fostering reflection, dialogue, and a deeper understanding of the human experience.
Directors
Lucy Bruell directed “Speaking with Music,” “Beyond the Practice Room,” and “On A Personal Note,” feature documentaries on young classical pianists that aired on public television. She was a producer/reporter for Newsweek Television and directed segments in Egypt and Greece for China Central Television’s series, “One World.” “A Visit with the Big Apple Circus Clown Care Unit,” narrated by Paul Newman received a Grand Award at the New York International Film and Video Festivals. She is the Director of the award- winning documentary, Oli Otya? Life and Loss in Rural Uganda.
Lucy is a recipient of multiple grants including support from the National Institutes of Health, the 911 Children’s Fund, and the Littauer Foundation. She received an M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University where she was the William Wood Research Fellow in Broadcast Journalism. She is an Instructor in the Division of Medical Humanities at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine.
Guy Glass, MD, MFA is a psychiatrist and playwright. He attended the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, completed his residency in psychiatry at the Institute of Pennsylvania Hospital, and is now an honorary physician at Pennsylvania Hospital.
A growing interest in theater led Guy to write Doctor Anonymous, a play about gay conversion therapy and the events leading up to the removal of homosexuality from the DSM. The play was produced in Los Angeles and published by Heartland Plays, and excerpts appear in Headcase: LGBTQ Writers and Artists on Mental Health and Wellness. Guy completed his MFA in theater in 2015 at Stony Brook University. His thesis project involved creating dramatic adaptations of Chekhov’s doctor stories, which have been used at various medical schools. Several of Guy’s short plays have also been published in anthologies by Smith & Kraus.
Guy developed and taught courses fusing medicine and theater at the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care and Bioethics at Stony Brook School of Medicine, and at Drexel University College of Medicine. He is a Fellow of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, where he is on the steering committee for the Section on Medicine and the Arts. Guy served as an editor on the Literature Arts Medicine Database from 2015-2023.
Steven Field received his B.A. in History from Yale University in 1973 and his M.D. from New York University School of Medicine four years later. Following Gastroenterology training at Mount Sinai Hospital, he returned to clinical practice and teaching at NYU, where he has remained, though retired from practice. He is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine in the School of Medicine, and also received certification in Bioethics and Medical Humanities, as well as Psychodynamic Psychotherapy of Adults.
Long interested in the intersection of mind and body (especially brain and gut), he had prior to retiring both medical and psychotherapy practices. Dr. Field serves as Clinical Ethics Consultant at NYU Langone Health and is the Physician Leader for the Schwartz Rounds program at NYU and a facilitator for the School’s Humanistic Aspects of Medical Education program. He co-teaches a high school class, Bioethics and Medical Humanities, as well as lecturing on the politics of and collusion between the medical profession and the Third Reich for an organization that trains high school teachers nationwide who teach Holocaust studies. He also has one of the larger collections of unpublished—in fact, unsubmitted—short story manuscripts in the New York metropolitan area.
Editors & Writers
Dustin Avery Brinker could read before he could talk. Originally from Pennsylvania, he attended Ursinus College, where he studied French, and then matriculated into NYU Grossman School of Medicine in 2017. Dustin’s passion for underserved healthcare manifested in his undergraduate medical education through his work with the NYC Free Clinic, acting as Co-Director of Management during the preclinical stage, and later as an Executive Clinical Coordinator. His passion for the liberal arts and student advocacy pushed him to work in the Student Affairs offices of both his undergrad and medical school, culminating in his matriculation into the joint NYU-Maastricht MHPE (Master of Health Professions Education) program in 2020, the third medical student to ever do so. He graduated from both NYUGSoM and Maastricht University in 2022 and began a research-track psychiatry residency at Zucker Hillside Hospital of Northwell Health. Intersecting with his goal of being an Academic Psychiatrist, Dustin’s scholarship centralizes around writing skill development and the role of literature in medical education.
Jack Coulehan is a Professor Emeritus of Family, Population, and Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University and Senior Fellow at the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care, and Bioethics. He earned his BA from St. Vincent College and his MD and MPH from the University of Pittsburgh. Jack completed his residency in internal medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Wake Forest University and pursued a fellowship in community health at the University of Pittsburgh. Early in his career, he co-founded the Center for Medical Ethics at Pitt and developed one of the first doctor-patient communication courses required in American medical schools.
In 1991, Jack joined Stony Brook, where he established the hospital’s ethics consultation service and developed the medical school’s ethics and humanities curriculum. He directed the Institute for Medicine in Contemporary Society, a precursor to the current Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care, and Bioethics.
Jack is a prolific author with over 250 articles and book chapters, covering topics from epidemiology and clinical trials to medical ethics and poetry. He has published seven poetry collections and received numerous accolades, including the American College of Physicians’ Nicholas Davies Award for outstanding lifetime contributions to humanism in medicine.
Jacalyn Duffin, CM, MD (Toronto), PhD (Sorbonne), FRCPC, FRSC, FCAH, is a hematologist and historian and professor emerita at Queen’s University where she occupied the Hannah Chair of the History of Medicine from 1988 to 2017. A former president of both the American and Canadian scholarly societies for the history of medicine, she is the author of eleven books and more than 100 peer-reviewed articles, holds several awards for teaching, research and service, including Fellowship in the Royal Society of Canada (2012) and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences (2013), and induction into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame (2019). She was named to the Order of Canada in 2020. Her research focuses on disease, technology, religion, and health policy and she runs an activist website for information about the drug shortage. Her book Stanley’s Dream on Canada’s medical expedition to Easter Island was published in 2019 and her COVID-19: A History appeared in October 2022. She is editor-in-chief of the Oxford Bibliographies history of medicine module to be launched in spring 2025.
Sebastian Galbo served as Co-Editor from September 2017 until August 2023. His academic work focuses on health and disease in American literature. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in English at the University at Buffalo, where he also earned an MS in Information and Library Science. Additionally, he holds an MA in Liberal/Cultural Studies from Dartmouth College, a Certificate in Bioethics from Yale University (Sherwin B. Nuland Summer Institute in Bioethics), and a BA in English from Niagara University.
David M. Hsu is a family physician who practices in Toronto, Canada. He graduated from Cornell University with a BA double degree in History and Biochemistry before attending medical school at Queen’s University. He is a faculty member of the University of Toronto in the North York General Hospital Department of Family and Community Medicine.
He is interested in storytelling in both the written and audio form. He has produced several ongoing podcasts, including the Medical Dads, the Sports Literati Podcast, and the W5H Book Club. He is most interested in the Asian-American immigrant experience.
Website: www.davidmhsu.com
Marilyn Chandler McEntyre received her Ph.D. in comparative literature from Princeton University. She taught literature at Mills College and the College of New Jersey before going to Westmont College. Dr. McEntyre has written three books, edited three collections of essays and poetry, and published widely in periodicals both in literature and in medical humanities. Her courses in literature and medicine examine cultural, social, and ethical dimensions of medicine, notions of illness, health, and healing, the nature of medical authority, the politics of medical institutions and medical education, complexities of public health policy, and the language of pain, all through literary textsHer publications include Approaches to Teaching Literature and Medicine (Modern Language Association, 2000), co-edited with Anne Hunsaker Hawkins, and three books of poems on Dutch painters: Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Van Gogh. Her most recent book is Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies (Eerdmans 2009). She is a contributing editor to the journal, Literature and Medicine (Johns Hopkins) and serves on the board of the Center for Medicine, Humanities, and Law at U.C. Berkeley. Dr. McEntyre has won a number of awards for teaching, including the Teacher of the Year Award at Westmont College, an Arnold Graves award from the American Council of Learned Societies for Outstanding Teaching, and the Phi Beta Kappa of Northern California Outstanding Teaching Award. She has also won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies (through the Nathan Cummings Foundation) and has held an endowed chair in American literature.
Website: www.marilynmcentyre.com
Tony Miksanek is a family physician and author of two collections of short stories, Raining Stethoscopes and Murmurs. His reviews, essays, and creative nonfiction have appeared in a number of professional and mainstream publications including Discover, Chicago Sun-Times, JAMA, NEJM, Academic Medicine, and American Scientist. For years, he wrote a column for American Family Physician that chronicled the day-to-day experiences of a small town doctor. He has taught classes on modern literature, the short story, and creative writing. Dr. Miksanek serves as Book and Media Review Editor for the Journal of Medical Humanities and is Adjunct Assistant Professor of Medical Humanities at the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine. He is an avid runner who has completed many marathons.
J. Russell Teagarden was a co-editor of the NYU Literature, Arts and Medicine Database from March, 2016 until August, 2023. Russell spent 19 years in executive leadership positions in the medical affairs section of Medco Health. He joined Medco after having practiced as a clinical pharmacist in critical care and drug information in the Chicago teaching hospital community.
Teagarden has a Bachelor of Science degree in Pharmacy from the University of Illinois College of Pharmacy, a Master of Arts degree in research methodology from Loyola University of Chicago, and a Doctor of Medical Humanities degree from Drew University. He completed a residency in hospital pharmacy at Northwestern University Medical Center and was a visiting scholar at the National Institutes of Health Bioethics Department. He has served as a trustee for nonprofit health care organizations, and as a member of advisory panels for several government and quasi-government organizations. Teagarden has held faculty appointments at several pharmacy schools and has served on deans’ advisory councils. He has published and spoken frequently on topics including clinical research, pharmacy, health policy, ethics, education, and the humanities.
Russell currently publishes a blog, According to the Arts, and produces a podcast, The Clinic & The Person, both of which seek and describe works from the Humanities that add to or elaborate on Biomedicine texts and learnings.
Shawn Thomas, MD, is a graduate of the NYU School of Medicine and a former fellow of the Rudin Medical Ethics and Humanities program. Shawn discovered his passion for medical humanities as a student of Laura Ferguson’s Art and Anatomy course, where he spent his evenings unwinding in the anatomy lab, drawing sketches of various human anatomical structures. Through this course, he was introduced to Lucy Bruell, who helped him flourish as an editor of the LitMed medical humanities database, and later as a Rudin Medical Ethics and Humanities fellow. Shawn is currently pursuing training in interventional radiology at the University of California, San Diego, but continues to read avidly across a variety of disciplines, including within health sciences, social sciences, philosophy, and technology.
Howard Trachtman graduated from Haverford College and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He has been a practicing pediatric nephrologist for 35 years. He is a clinical researcher and has been the principal investigator for NIH- and industry-sponsored clinical trials for pediatric and adult patients with glomerular disease.
Wei Chao is a seasoned new media producer specializing in front-end development and design across diverse sectors such as advertising, education, gaming, and the arts. His proficiency in computer-driven media, online education, web technologies, and user-centric design distinguishes him in his field. Early in his career, Wei worked closely with Dr. Felice Aull on the original Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database project at NYU School of Medicine, starting in 1996.
Based in New York, Wei is also a multimedia artist with a Master’s Degree in Professional Studies from NYU’s Interactive Telecommunication Program, where he received the Artist of the Future honor. In his artistic endeavors, Wei’s photography explores the human condition, capturing landscapes that reveal the complexities of modern society. To view more of his photography work, please visit freewei.com.
Contributors
Cortney Davis, a nurse practitioner, is the author of five poetry collections, most recently “Daughter. ” She is also the author of three memoirs and co-editor of three anthologies of creative writing by nurses. Her honors include an NEA Poetry Fellowship, three CT Commission on the Arts Poetry Grants, the Prairie Schooner Poetry Prize, the Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize, a gold medal Ben Franklin Award, a Tillie Olsen Creative Writing Award, and two CT Center for the Book Awards. Her poems have appeared in Last Stanza, InScribe, Poetry East, Hanging Loose, Poetry, The Sun, Bellevue Literary Review, Nostos, Hamilton Stone Review, CALYX, Planisphere Q, Intima and other journals.
Website: www.cortneydavis.com
Dr. Stanley A. Plotkin is Emeritus Professor of the University of Pennsylvania. Until 1991, he was Professor of Pediatrics and Microbiology at the University of Pennsylvania, Professor of Virology at the Wistar Institute and at the same time, Director of Infectious Diseases and Senior Physician at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. For seven years he was Medical and Scientific Director of Sanofi Pasteur, based at Marnes-la-Coquette, outside Paris. He is now consultant to vaccine manufacturers and non-profit research organizations.
He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and the French Academy of Medicine. His bibliography includes over 900 articles and he has edited several books including the textbook “Vaccines.” He developed the rubella vaccine now in standard use throughout the world, is codeveloper of the pentavalent rotavirus vaccine, and has worked extensively on the development and application of other vaccines including anthrax, oral polio, rabies, varicella, and cytomegalovirus.
Carol Schilling, PhD, FCPP, is appointed to the Haverford College Health Studies Core Faculty and previously taught medical and bioethics students at the Penn Center for Bioethics and Feinberg’s Medical Humanities and Bioethics program. Her research and teaching interests include contemporary films, visual arts, memoirs, and other writing about illness, disability, and family caregiving; narrative approaches to bioethics; health and social justice; critical and reflective writing.
Nancy Novick is a writer and editor who specializes in medicine, healthcare and the arts. Her numerous profiles in print and online alumni magazines for Vassar, Rutgers, and Brown University, have brought her into conversation with dancers, fine artists, scientists, and museum curators, among others. She is also an award-winning author of short mystery fiction.
Nancy earned her BA and MA in English literature, respectively at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University, and cites a graduate school course in narrative medicine as an important window into the intersection between medicine and the humanities.
Dr. P Ravi Shankar is a faculty member at the IMU Centre for Education, IMU University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He is active in small group learning, health humanities and education in developing nations. Dr. Shankar is a member of the TLM Global Counterspace program and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), and an academic editor of PLoS One, an editorial board member of BMC Medical Education, and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Educators. He has over 800 publications in various national and international journals and his work has been widely cited. He is also a creative writer and a science popularizer and has written articles on medical and scientific subjects for newspapers and magazines. He enjoys traveling and photography.
Advisors
Felice Aull was born in Vienna during the Nazi era and immigrated to the US with her parents. She holds a PhD in basic medical sciences and a more recent MA in humanities and social thought. While a full-time faculty member at New York University School of Medicine, she founded a widely used online resource, The Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database and taught courses on borderlands in healthcare. She is now adjunct in the Division of Medical Humanities in NYU’s Department of Medicine. She started writing poetry in her 60s and is published in many print and online journals. Her work was nominated for a 2018 Pushcart Prize. She has a full poetry collection, Mandatory Evacuation Zone (2017) and an earlier chapbook, The Music Behind Me (2012), both published by Kelsay Books. In 2007 she was a finalist for the Margie Editor’s Prize Best Poem.
Felice’s scholarly articles are published in The Journal of Medical Humanities, Narrative, and in other professional journals. She serves as contributing editor of the journal, Literature and Medicine and reviews poetry for The Bellevue Literary Review. She lives in New York City.
Website: www.feliceaull.com
Martin Kohn, PhD is Associate Professor Emeritus, Department of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University (CWRU). He recently retired from the directorship of the Program in Medical Humanities and the Years 1 and 2 Art and Practice of Medicine courses at Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of CWRU. He previously directed the Human Values in Medicine program at Northeast Ohio Medical University (NEOMED) during which time he founded the William Carlos Williams Poetry Competition for Medical Students and co-founded the Center for Literature and Medicine, with Carol Donley, of Hiram College. He and Dr. Donley are founding editors of the Literature and Medicine series at Kent State University Press that, under them, published 19 volumes. His poetry has appeared in numerous print and electronic journals including Exquisite Corpse, The Pharos, Annals of Internal Medicine, and Pulse-voices from the Heart of Medicine.
Join In
We look forward to receiving contributions from everyone who is interested in participating in this dialogue. Submissions related to works of literature, performing arts, and visual arts as well as essays should align with our mission statement above.
We welcome reviews, essays, and opinion pieces from you. Most submissions will be between 500 and 1,000 words. All submissions must be original work by the author and may incorporate short excerpts of the literary works that are the subject of the piece, so long as such use complies with the fair use doctrine of US copyright law. All submissions are subject to review by members of the Editorial Board.
Please start by kindly introduce yourself if you are interested in contributing to Medhum.org, and we will get in touch with you shortly.
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