Faculty

Deepthiman Gowda, MD, MPH, is a general internist and an associate professor of medicine at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. He is the Director of Clinical Practice for the Program in Narrative Medicine and the Director of the Foundations of Clinical Medicine, which teaches Columbia’s students the medical interview, physical exam, and clinical reasoning. Through a grant from the Macy Foundation he is investigating the impact of introducing narrative medicine methods in primary care clinics.

Danielle Spencer, M.S., is a faculty member of the Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University as well as the Albert Einstein College of Medicine Bioethics department. She is a co-author of The Principles and Practice of Narrative Medicine (Oxford University Press, 2017). She worked as artist/musician David Byrne’s Art Director for many years, collaborating on and exhibiting a range of projects, as well as working with photographer Nan Goldin.

Maura Spiegel, Ph.D., teaches literature and film at Columbia University and Barnard College. She is the associate director of the Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, where she also teaches a film course. With Rita Charon, MD, Ph.D., she edited the journal Literature and Medicine for seven years. She is co-author of The Principles and Practice of Narrative Medicine (Oxford University Press, 2017).

Anita Wohlmann, Ph.D., is assistant professor of literature and narrative medicine at the University of Southern Denmark. In her research, she explores the role of metaphors in medical humanities and American literature. After a research stay at the Program in Narrative Medicine in 2015, she has completed a certificate of study in narrative practice (Boston 2016) and has facilitated narrative medicine workshops with medical students and practitioners in Germany.

Mita Banerjee, Ph.D., teaches American studies at the Obama Institute of Transnational American Studies at the University of Mainz. She is cospeaker, with Norbert Paul, of the Research Training Group “Life Sciences, Life Writing”, which is funded by the German Research Foundation. She is the author of Medical Humanities in American Studies: Life Writing, Medicine, and the Power of Autobiography (Heidelberg: Winter, 2018).