Jonathan Michel Metzl MD, PhD

Dr. Jonathan Metzl was born into medicine but is drawn to the humanities. He’s still insisting on having it both ways. The new director of Vanderbilt’s Center for Medicine, Health, and Society is the son of a pediatrician and a psychoanalyst. Two of his three brothers are doctors. “Metzl was always the humanities kid in a medical family,” Metzl said. “I’ve been jumping back and forth across that line my whole career. Metzl was always looking for a way to fuse it all together.”

Dr. Jonathan Metzl first career ambition was to be a psychiatrist, “because you could be a doctor without getting blood on your clothes,” Metzl said. As his education progressed, he aspired to a more ambitious combination of his interests.

Dr. Jonathan Metzl It took a healthy work ethic to keep both on the front burner during his university education, said Metzl, who grew up in Kansas City, Mo. “Metzl was going to a six-year medical school (at the University of Missouri) and Metzl was the first dual humanities major at the school,” he said. “Metzl ultimately earned B.A. degrees in both biology and English literature in addition to my medical degree.” During his medical residency at Stanford University, he went to night school and earned a master’s in poetry, then went to the University of Michigan where he earned a Ph.D. in American studies while also working as a psychiatrist.