Vincent Punzo, Ph.D.

About me

As part of my research, I contribute regularly to columns on medical ethics for the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly. My recent articles for the journal have focused on pandemic ethics, healthcare and race, and narrative medicine. During my time at Earlham, I have been awarded two grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The first grant was for my work on human dignity and the second grant was awarded to develop Earlham’s Medical Humanities applied minor. That minor has proved to be highly beneficial to our students who are interested in pursuing a career in medicine or healthcare.

One of the things that I especially enjoy about teaching at Earlham is being able to  teach interdisciplinary courses not typically found in other colleges. For example, “Cradle and Grave” is truly a unique class. In the first half of the course students study the beginning of human life: prenatal development, birth, and infancy.  In the second half of the course the focus turns to the end of human life: dying and death. It is a class in which students learn about birth, death, joy, sorrow, and most of all, what it means to be human. Some of my other favorite classes to teach include Psychology of Happiness, Psychology of Sport, and Moral Education.

I am a diehard baseball fan (I have attended games at over 40 different major league baseball stadiums) and enjoy running, birdwatching and reading books from a wide range of genres and perspectives.

Education

• Ph.D., University of Notre Dame
• M.A., University of Notre Dame
• M.S., Saint Louis University
• B.A., Saint Louis University

Professional memberships

• International Positive Psychology Association

Scholarly interest

Bioethics and human dignity: recent advances in genetics, information technology and neuroimaging have led to increasingly complex ethical issues in medicine. I attempt to deliberate these issues through the lens of the concept of human dignity.

Published works

My columns on medical ethics appear twice a year in the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly. My most recent columns on the topics of narrative medicine, pandemic ethics and bioethics and race, can be found in the winter 2019, spring 2020, and autumn 2020 issues of that journal. An earlier essay on “Alzheimer’s, Tube Feeding, and Prudential Judgment” was published in the fall 2013 issue.