I would guess that most of the folks you give cards to are interested in your bioethics credentials, so any way you can ID that will be helpful. In the end though, a business card is only useful if the recipient connects it with his or her interaction with you. It is contact information not necessarily credentialling (sp?).
]]>The business card thing would be relatively simple if I wasn’t at two institutions – it’s the dual institutions thing that’s really shooting me in the foot. Well, that and the SUNY system appears to be kind of cranky in how you list departments out.
]]>It’s all about marketing, IMO. Most scholars I’ve read are in general agreement that bioethics is a derivative or second-order discipline (yes, there are signs this is beginning to change, but I still think the characterization accurately describes bioethics practice today, and certainly describes bioethics practice of the past). If this is so, then I think it’s fair to characterize yourself as a student of philosophy and bioethics (or law and bioethics, or bioethics and the medical humanities, etc.)
My marketing problem is even more difficult: who, after all, really knows what the medical humanities are, or what a medical humanist does? Heck, I’ve spent the past 18 months trying to figure it out for myself (and there is still much disagreement among medical humanists themselves).
Are you a philosophy student? Yes. Do you have a background in bioethics? Yes. Do you have a current interest in bioethics? Yes. Is it your main area of interest, and will your dissertation likely reflect that interest? Yes and yes (but obviously, correct me if I am mistaken).
I think it’s reasonable to say something like Ph.D Student in Philosophy (Concentration in Bioethics), or something like that. I tell people I’m studying ethics and the medical humanities. Actually, IMH began requiring its students to have majors and minors in the program for precisely these marketing reasons. No?
As a side note, if at any point you get irritated by my apparent current status as Kelly’s Comment Troll, just let me know.
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