Brooke A. Kowalke, PhD

Department

• English

Position

• Assistant Professor

Secondary Appointment

• School of Medicine

• ENG 158: Contemporary Composition: Voices for Health
• ENG 171: Narratives of Health and Illness
• ENG 173: "Anchors Aweigh!": Transatlantic Travels in Literature
• ENG 200: Introduction to English Studies
• ENG 225: "Dead Men Tell No Tales": Pirate Literature Through the Ages
• ENG 229: Medicine in Literature
• ENG 350: American Literature I: Beginnings to 1865
• ENG 386: Medical Humanities in English Studies
• ENG 409: Shakespeare
• ENG 446: The Body in Early English Literature
• ENG 484: Pirate Literature from 1600-the present
• HRS 200: The Modern World
• HRS 331: Pirate Literature from 1600-the Present
• IDC 428: Bearing Witness: Memoirs of Dying, Death, and Grief (School of Medicine)
• SIS 508: Narratives of Neurodiversity (School of Medicine)

Brooke Kowalke is an Assistant Professor who has been teaching at Creighton since the Fall of 2004. Her specializations include medical memoir, narratives of health and illness, medical humanities, and early modern transatlantic literature. She is currently working on a memoir—Grace Notes: Lessons on Personhood, Parenthood, and Love—about how her daughter Grace, who lived 5 months with Trisomy-18, changed everything. Pieces of that memoir appear on the Literary Mama Blog, in Barren Magazine, and under the gum tree. She also works on the scholarship of medical education and the role of literature within a medical school curriculum. She teaches courses including “Contemporary Composition: Voices for Health” and “The Body in Early English Literature” in the College of Arts and Sciences. In the School of Medicine, she teaches courses including “Narratives of Neurodiversity” and “Bearing Witness: Memoirs of Dying, Death, and Grief.”

Publications

• , 15/16

Editing and Reviews

• , 57.3, 359

Presentations

Research and Scholarship Interests

• • Medical Memoir
  • Grief Literature
  • Medical Humanities
  • Medical Education
  • Early Modern Transatlantic Literature

Current Research Projects

• Recent Publications:
  • “Collapsed Time: Two Stories of Academic Caregivers and a Call to Action." co-authored with Dr. Jessica Jorgenson. Journal of Multi-modal Rhetoric (forthcoming, Fall 2022)
  • “The Before, During, and After” October, 2021. under the gum tree
  •  “Siblings.” Barren Magazine, Issue 15/16 (*Editor’s pick), July 2020. https://barrenmagazine.com/siblings/ 
  • “Making Room.” Literary Mama Blog, June 2020. https://literarymama.com/blog/archives/2020/06/writing-prompt-brooke-kowalke-responds.html
  • "Things You Can’t Prepare for: Tax Day After Your Child Dies.” Still Standing Magazine. February 10, 2019. https://stillstandingmag.com/2019/02/10/tax-day-after-your-child-dies/
  
  Recent Presentations:
  • “Reading Personhood, Treating Whole People: Using Literary Texts to Engage Personhood in Medical Education.” Workshop led with Dr. Matthew Reznicek. AAMC/NEGEA Health Humanities and Health Equity Alliance for Learning (HEAL) SIG Conference. Online. July 26, 2022.
  • “Gendered Grief in Hamnet.” Panel: Sick Rooms—The Gendered Experience of Medicine and Space. Health Humanities Consortium. Online. March 26, 2022.
  • “Grace Notes: Intellectual Disability, Personhood, and the Politics of Medical Intervention.” The Examined Life Conference. University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine. Online. October 22, 2021.
  • “Good Readers and Good Doctors: Literature in Medical Education.” Panel with Dr. Matthew Reznicek and Dr. James Smith. American Society for Bioethics and Humanities. Online. October 15, 2021.
  • “ ‘The beautiful, vibrant, living world goes on’: Bearing Witness to One’s Own Dying in Nina Rigg’s The Bright Hour.” Contemporary Womxn’s Writing and the Medical Humanities International Online Conference. Online. July 31, 2021.
  • “Making Visible the Under-seen Act of Bearing Witness in Memoirs of Dying and Death.” NNMHR Congress 2021: Medical Humanities—In(Visibility). Online. April 21, 2021.
  • “Using First-Person Narratives of Neurodiversity to Enhance Communication and Understanding.” The Examined Life Conference. University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine. Iowa City, IA. November 21, 2020.
  • “’To Versus For’: Intellectual Disability and the Politics of Medical Intervention” at Human/e Healthcare Symposium October 24, 2020 https://excellence.creighton.edu/HHH

• Kingfisher Research and Scholarship Fellow, 2020
• Kingfisher Curriculum Innovation Fellowship for SIS Development, 2019
• MAGIS Core Curriculum New Course Development Grant,, Creighton University, 2014
• F 2013, S 2014, F 2014, IGGY Awards, 2013