Marcia Day Childress, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Medical Education (Medical Humanities)
Director, Program in Humanities
(434) 924 2094
woolf@virginia.edu
Marcia Day Childress directs the Program in Humanities within the Center for Biomedical Ethics and Humanities. In this role, she oversees elective courses in humanities disciplines and other educational programming in medical humanities. She also directs the Medical Center Hour, the School of Medicine's weekly forum on medicine and society.
Professor Childress teaches medical school courses in Literature and Medicine, Cells to Society and Social Issues in Medicine, and directs medical students' independent research in humanities and the arts. Together with a law professor, she leads an Interprofessional Seminar in Ethical Values and Professional Life for medical and law students. In the College of Arts and Sciences, she teaches an upper-level undergraduate course, Literature and Medicine - Narratives of Illness and Doctoring, in the Department of English.
Her research interests include narrative in medicine, reflective education and the moral formation of the physician, and uses of literature and the visual arts in medical education (including faculty development) and preparation for professional life. She writes on literature and the role of narrative and the arts in medicine, ethics, medical education, and end-of-life care.
A charter member of the medical school's Academy of Distinguished Educators, Professor Childress received a Dean's Award for Excellence in Teaching and was elected to the national medical honor societies Alpha Omega Alpha and the Gold Humanism Honor Society. Active in institutional service, having been chair of the Faculty Senate, chair of two Senate standing committees and chair of the President's Advisory Committee on Women's Concerns, she also sits on the School of Medicine 's Committee on Women, the Faculty Development Advisory Committee, the Cells to Society Steering Committee, the Medical Education Advisory Committee, and the Principles of Medicine Committee. Her national service includes consulting for the American Board of Internal Medicine, judging entries for the Gold Foundation's annual essay contest, and reviewing for the Bellevue Literary Review and UVA's own on-line journal, Hospital Drive.
Professor Childress holds degrees in English literature (B.A., Michigan State University; M.A. and Ph.D., University of Virginia, where she wrote her dissertation on Virginia Woolf).