Fall Update

At SPS this fall, all courses, other than pre-established online courses, will be offered face-to-face in our New York City classrooms. Some of these face-to-face courses will be offered in the HyFlex format to ensure that all of our students can make progress toward their degree requirements, if faced with delays due to student visas or vaccination effectiveness wait times.

Danielle Spencer, Ph.D.

Academic Director, Narrative Medicine Program; Senior Lecturer in the Discipline of Narrative Medicine

Academic Director of the Columbia University Narrative Medicine Program. Author of Metagnosis: Revelatory Narratives of Health and Identity (Oxford University Press, 2021) and co-author of Perkins-Prize-winning The Principles and Practice of Narrative Medicine (OUP, 2017). Research interests include retrospective diagnosis, contemporary film and bioethics, and healthcare pedagogy; creative and scholarly work appears in diverse outlets, from Ploughshares to The Lancet. Formerly artist/musician David Byrne’s Art Director, Spencer holds a B.A. from Yale University, an M.S. in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University, a Ph.D. from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. She is a 2019 MacDowell Fellow and a 2021 Yaddo Fellow.

Education

  • Ph.D., Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz
  • M.S., Columbia University
  • B.A., Yale University

Publications

Books

Essays / Articles / Chapters

  • "Drifting Out to Infinity." Danielle Spencer. Ploughshares, vol. 45, no. 3, October 2019, pp. 86–115. (Ploughshares Solo Vol. 7, No. 4.) PDF
  • “Mutant Bodies, Human Viewers: Dissolving Boundaries in Logan.” Saljooq M. Asif, Madeline Disner, Folarin Odusola, Danielle A. Rojas, Danielle Spencer. Literature and Medicine, vol. 37, no. 1, Spring 2019, pp. 141–65. PDF
  • ​“Illness Doula: Adding a New Role to Healthcare Practice.” Annie Robinson, Danielle Spencer and Bradley Lewis. Journal of Medical Humanities, vol. 40, June 2019, pp. 199–210. PDF
  • ​"Review: 4 3 2 1: A Novel by Paul Auster". Danielle Spencer. The Mathematical Intelligencer, vol. 40, no. 1, March 2018, pp. 80–83. PDF
  • ​​​“Narrative Medicine.” Danielle Spencer. The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Medicine, edited by Miriam Solomon et al., Routledge, 2017, pp. 372–82. PDF
  • ​​​ “All Creatures Great and Small.” Danielle Spencer. The Lancet, vol. 386, 2015, pp. 22–23. PDF
  • “Sebald in Moszkva Tér.” Danielle Spencer. The Hungarian Review, vol. 6, no. 2, 2015, pp. 79–81. PDF
  • ​​“Critical Conversations: A 360º Clinical Portrait.” Danielle Spencer and Stephanie Adler Yuan. Esopus, vol. 22, 2015, pp. 137–52. PDF
  • ​​“Looking Back.” Danielle Spencer. Creative Nonfiction, vol. 47, 2013, pp. 34-38. PDF Included in Beautiful Flesh: A Body of Essays, edited by Stephanie G’Schwind, Center for Literary Publishing, 2017, pp. 35–43. 
  • ​​“Your Data is Showing.” Danielle Spencer. WIRED, vol. 13.11, 2005.
  • ​​“It’s Like a Thing of Everything….” Danielle Spencer.  davidbyrne.com, 2002. PDF

Programs

In the News

Narrative Medicine-NECR Project Receives Faculty Seed Grant to Address Structural Racism

Danielle Spencer on Storytelling, Critical Theory, and Illness Narratives