Welcome to the QHC Case Collective. This post includes resources that complement this bonus episode of the QHC Podcast, recorded 14 July 2026. Whenever possible, I link to content that is publicly available, online, and free.
—Christy Rentmeester, QHC Podcast host
I interviewed Dr Kirsten Day and Mr CJ Cates to investigate prison-based teaching and learning about classical epic, ancient plays, and health humanities themes enduring since antiquity.
Resources
On Seneca’s worry about widely available papyrus from the 12 July 2026 New York Times.
Book by Kirsten Day, Cowboy Classics: The Roots of the American Western in the Epic Tradition, Edinburgh University Press, 2026.
Article by Kirsten Day, “Classics and the incarcerated,” The Classical Outlook, 99(4), 233-244, 2024.
Book by Jonathan Shay, Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character, Scribner, 1994.
Book by Jonathan Shay, Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming, University of Michigan Press, 2002.
Book by Bryan Doerries, The Theater of War: What Ancient Greek Tragedies Can Teach Us Today, Knopf Doubleday, 2015.
Theater of War Productions
Augustana Prison Education Program
The Iliad by Homer
The Odyssey by Homer
Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus
Ajax by Sophocles
The Myth of Demeter and Persephone
Ask 2 questions.
- Topics such as mental health, immigration, sexual violence, racial violence, gun violence, caregiver experiences, care of dying persons, and substance use are each named as health humanities themes and applications of Brian Doerries’s Theater of War project. Which health professional affective skill sets–such as emotional intelligence, clinical comportment, or motivational interviewing, for example–could be cultivated by studing works investigated in Theater of War productions?
- In which ways are diverse teaching and learning settings important to cultivating community in health humanity investigations of classical epic, ancient plays, and other works from antiquity?
The feature image for this post is available from the Public Domain collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Learn more about this work here.
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