About Us: Prosody Literary and Arts Magazine

Prosody is the official student-run literary and arts magazine at Dell Medical School. Our mission is to create an environment that allows faculty, residents, and medical students to share their experiences and collective humanity through the forms of self reflection, poetry, photography, and art. Our inaugural issue can be found here.

Barrels, William Austin (left); Lower Yosemite Falls, Emily Yan (right)

Support Prosody Your invaluable support means the world to us as we work towards crafting and publishing our second issue. With your gracious donation, we will be able to cover the costs associated with printing our magazine, maintaining our website, and organizing enriching creative workshop events. Thank you so much for your time, consideration, and generosity.

Thalamic Enlightenment, Victoria Siu

History In summer 2021, medical students Victoria Siu and Lexi de Montfort Shepherd set out to start a literary and arts magazine. By the fall, they welcomed a group of passionate students, and in collaboration with Prosody's dedicated faculty advisor, Dr. Steve Steffensen, the name Prosody was selected. Pros-o-dy is a term found both within the arts and within the field of neurology. It means the patterns of rhythm and sound used in language. 

In our first year, the magazine received 48 total submissions from students, medical residents, and faculty for our first edition. 30 of these pieces were ultimately included in the final publication. We hosted a launch party in April 2023 to celebrate all of our amazing contributors, faculty sponsors, and student team. 

We are thrilled to launch our second edition in April 2024. This time around, Prosody received over double the amount of submissions, with 121 individual pieces sent in for consideration. 22 readers were involved in evaluating submissions in comparison to the 10 readers who volunteered the year prior. Looking ahead, we hope to maintain our trajectory of growth so that we can continue showcasing our community's creativity while promoting the arts in medicine.

Yan Portrait, Emily Yan
Medical Humanities We are passionate about the critical role that the arts play in fostering a healthier medical ecosystem for both patients and providers. Engagement with the arts decreases burnout and compassion fatigue in addition to enhancing empathy, altruism, and clinical observation and communication skills. Through Prosody, we not only hope to showcase the creativity of our colleagues, but to provide an outlet for our community to share their experiences through artistic expression. In doing so, we aim to better understand the intimate connections between patient and physician, to seek the meaning of medical practice for both the individual physician and the collective profession, and to promote discourse on complex, multifaceted components of healthcare. 

If you are interested in exploring further, the 2020 AAMC report includes a feature about the role of arts and humanities in medical education.

To keep up with us after the conclusion of our fundraiser, you can follow us on Instagram @prosodymagazine for updates! You can also check out our website HERE.