Peter Fortunato

ABSTRACT

Of Poets and Doctors

Peter Fortunato

In this personal narrative, adapted from my memoir of my years in Weill Cornell Medical College - QatarWeill Cornell Medical College - Qatar, I present a digest of the educational philosophy that informed four years of my teaching at Weill Cornell Medical College - Qatar was known when first established. As an author, artist, educator and practitioner of complementary alternative medicine who has worked with international students over many years, and in my therapeutic practice treated many clients from diverse backgrounds, I had much to bring to my teaching and to my position as Coordinator of the Writing Program in the college’s Premedical Studies department.  The years 2005 – 2009 were crucial in Weill Cornell Medical College - QatarWeill Cornell Medical College - Qatar development as an “education economy” and cosmopolitan crossroads, and I was eager to work with first and second year premed students on their way to our Medical Studies program—the first to grant American medical degrees anywhere overseas. It’s not really so difficult for  motivated, well instructed students to learn to write college level essays, but I also wanted these science-minded future doctors to learn what sorts of questions are asked in fields of the humanities.  I wanted them to have a taste of what Socrates meant when he said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”  Such inquiry goes with learning the skills of close reading, literary analysis, and research methodology, which  were the bases of my writing seminars.  As well, in my course on literature and psychology, I introduced future doctors to the archetype of the shaman as wounded healer.  I related this concept to my own undergraduate crisis that resulted in my choosing to become a poet rather than a doctor of veterinary medicine, and eventually to becoming certified as a hypnotherapist and establishing my private practice. Things might have changed somewhat since I left Weill Cornell Medical College - QatarWeill Cornell Medical College - Qatar, but in this presentation I hope to inform my audience of what we started with at Weill Cornell Medical College - QatarWeill Cornell Medical College - Qatar and how I succeeded with my students.  I invite colleagues to consider how they approach the subjects of Narrative Medicine and Medical Humanities today to teach students in the Middle East.  

BIO

An author, artist, educator, and hypnotherapist, Mr. Fortunato is among the generation that helped develop courses expressly designed to teach writing at the university level. His interest in developmental psychology and his natural gift for counseling led to his obtaining certification as a hypnotherapist in 1993 and the establishment of his private practice in Ithaca, NY, which he maintains until this day. In 2005 when the Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar was established, because entering students would need to meet the American medical college requirements of two undergraduate courses in the humanities, Mr. Fortunato was among several teachers who arrived from Cornell’s Ithaca campus to teach writing.  At the Doha campus his popular courses emphasized the study of the newly emerging field of Narrative Medicine, as well as the reading of world literature in English translation, and an introduction to the study of psychology and its relation to literature. Mr. Fortunato left WCM-Q in 2009, returning to Ithaca to continue teaching in Cornell’s Summer College until his retirement.  Besides publishing two volumes of poetry since then, his first novel, Carnevale, appeared in 2019.  He is currently completing a memoir of his years in Qatar.