The new hybrids

Agave

Narrative medicine
“There’s something about narrative medicine that just clicks with people,” says Marsha Hurst, director of Columbia University’s Narrative Medicine program, which officially becomes degree-earning (for a B.S.) this fall. Its primary purpose is to underscore the importance of patient narratives to medical practitioners, the field of medicine and, ultimately, to the patients themselves. “The history of medicine is one of distancing,” says Hurst. “The fso-called art of the clinician has moved away from the story to the point of devaluing it. But there is a growing feeling among patients that they must be heard.” And it seems health-care professionals, too, are coming to realize that listening to patient experiences can lead to better communication, better diagnoses and better courses of treatment. About half of this year’s students will end up practicing clinical medicine of some sort; many are taking the program as a transitional year before entering medical school, while others are working toward the degree post-B.A. while completing their premed courses. The other half comes from the humanities: people with communications, writing and journalism backgrounds who want to put their talents to work in health care. Their future is essentially uncharted territory, Hurst says, and their possibilities are many. “They could become part of a medical humanities curriculum, do residency training, work with staff and patients in hospitals, run reading and writing programs in oncology units, or work with families as caregivers to help them process difficult experiences,” Hurst says. “They’re the entrepreneurs in the field.” The good news? While you do have to apply to take a course, you don’t need to be in the degree program to do so. And all of the program’s courses earn you college credits should you end up wanting the degree later.

Agave

Urban agriculture
“It’s cutting-edge and forward-looking,” says Fa-Tai Shieh of urban agriculture, the subject of a new course he’s teaching at the New School this fall. A Ph.D. student of Food Studies at New York University with a background in biology and economics, Shieh readily acknowledges that the field is still in its infancy and that he’ll be learning alongside the students in his class. “Until now, urban agriculture has been tied to food security issues,” he says. “Now that food has become more of a cultural focus [in the States], though, farming in cities is drawing quite a lot of attention.” He will be looking at what it takes to do urban farming by first asking a series of fundamental questions: “Why do we need it? Where in the city would it be? What would be grown? Who would the producers be? Who would the consumers be? And what are the economics of it? What environmental and biological considerations, like soil quality, would we have to take into account?” Each of the questions, it seems, taps into a different field of expertise, from economics and urban planning to architecture, biology and solar engineering. The class will look at case studies of actual city farming—including small community gardens, the backyard farms of Chicago and Los Angeles, and the experience of the city-state Singapore, which produces an astonishing 25 percent of its own produce—and explore the feasibility of vertical farms (built into skyscrapers). There will, of course, be some field trips too. Though the farm Shieh worked on ten years ago that provided a Harlem Greenmarket with food no longer exists, the city has many points of interest, he says. Foremost among them is the Value Added Farm in Red Hook, Brooklyn, which is a model of what can be done with public parkland: It was built atop a two-acre parking lot in 2001 in response to the closing of what was then the neighborhood’s only grocery store. The twice-weekly Red Hook Farmers’ Market it supplies is to this day the source of the neighborhood’s freshest produce, dairy products, meat and fish.

Agave

Food media
“What was once a subject only for the elite is trickling down,” says Anne E. McBride of our nation’s unstoppable interest in the particulars of food and cooking. The author of recipe books Bite Size and Chocolate Epiphany, McBride is also the director of the Center for Food Media, a year-old program at the Institute of Culinary Education. Until recently the premier cooking school catered exclusively to chefs-in-training. A total of 28 courses will be offered at the CFM this fall, and their content is about as diverse as the makings of a bouillabaisse. The curriculum is divided into six subcategories, all taught by pros in their field: Primer Courses range from food-history and recipe-writing intros to a workshop on the business side of food media; Food Writing features classes on food essays, wine and spirits reviews, and everything in between (including two courses in food journalism taught by TONY’s Eat Out editor, Gabriella Gershenson); Cookbook Writing offers courses on finding an agent, writing your own cookbook, and how to get one published; Digital Food Media classes explore such subjects as food blogging and how to pull off TV appearances; Visual Food Media has classes in food photography, video and TV production, as well as food styling; and Publicity & Marketing offerings explore the business side of the culinary world with a number of PR workshops. The Center also offers a lecture series called An Evening With…; check the website for the latest guest speakers. There are so many burgeoning crossover careers in food, in fact, that they are the subject of McBride’s next book. Its working title? Careers That Sizzle.

Agave

Music therapy
While hospitals occasionally hire musicians to perform for the therapeutic benefit of patients, music therapy involves far more than playing an instrument. Essentially, it uses music as a means of contacting the healthy part of an otherwise unwell person—a part traditional therapy has not been able to reach—and nurturing it to the extent that the whole person is able to overcome his or her psychoses. “Music goes right to the heart,” says Louise Montello, jazz pianist, music therapist, licensed psychoanalyst and head of the Creative Arts Therapy certificate program at the New School. “It bypasses the defenses of the conscious mind and speaks directly to emotional centers.” One of four concentrations in the certificate program—the others are art, drama and dance—music therapy ranks No. 2 after art therapy in prevalence, in part because the art therapist’s equipment is the most portable. Still, Montello believes music therapy is on the rise. Students in the program take four courses in their concentration, two in other modalities and two in clinical psychology; they are then placed in internships around the city to put their skills into practice, which can range from acute-care situations in psychiatric hospitals to a long-term series of regular visits to schools or hospitals. Many go on to get a master’s once they’ve finished the program, but there are lots of jobs out there that don’t require a degree, Montello says. Most often the therapeutic breakthrough happens when a patient is making his or her own music. The combination of piano and voice is excellent, Montello says, but singing taps into a person’s deepest recesses. Most of Montello’s own patients (she has a private practice) are, in fact, musicians. “That part of the self you’re reaching is the child,” Montello says. “And the child is the part of the self that’s naturally creative.”