HENKF2304U English - Free topic D: Madness and culture in the modern world

This course aims to introduce students to different historical and cultural conceptualizations of madness and normality, and to make them familiar with the historical development of some of the core psychiatric and psychotherapeutic notions in the twentieth century in various cultural, economic and political contexts. Readings and lectures will primarily cover the historical and cultural study of madness and psychiatry in the English-speaking world, but we will be making constant references to other areas including Asia, Africa, Latin America and the MENA (Middle East and North Africa). The course will be structured around thematic clusters, such as

gender, class and madness;

psychiatry and war;

madness and political revolution;

notions of trauma and resilience;

decolonization, race and cross-cultural psychiatry;

anti-psychiatry and counter-cultural movements;

social lives of psychiatric disorders;

global mental health;

therapeutic citizenship;

mind/body dualism;

migration and mental health;

lived experiences of illness/illness narratives;

humanitarian psychiatry, etc.

The course will use the history of psychiatry and mental disorders as a window to understanding society, culture and illness. It seeks to establish connections between the prevalent notions of madness/mental illness on the one side, and social, cultural, economic and political factors on the other. Based on critical theories of illness and healing, and historical and anthropological approaches to psychiatry, the course will explore how constructs such as social class, race and gender have shaped definitions and understandings of normality and deviance, and how these understandings developed over time. It aims to situate the development of psychiatry within its proper socio-historical contexts across regions and continents, and places the history of English-speaking and European psychiatry in a global context. The transnational approach will help us delve into the issue of cultural specificity of psychiatric and psychological categories. This will enable students to understand the role and different meanings of madness in the modern world, and to explore the mechanisms which are still used to define the normal and the pathological.

In addition to some of the most important and thought-provoking academic literature on the history and anthropology of psychiatry, course readings include a large number of primary documents - writings of both psychiatrists and their patients - as well as fiction works and films, which illustrate how insanity and normality are constructed culturally and in dialogue with popular tastes. We will investigate the intersection between literary narratives and psychiatric case histories, and examine the possibility of reading patient files as fiction narratives. At the same time, the course will encourage students to avoid an overly instrumentalist interpretation of psychiatry – which views it as merely a handmaid of social, economic or political factors.

The course will be taught by Professor Ana Antic, who will provide a historical analysis of the core themes, and Dr Lamia Moghnieh, who will focus on a more contemporary exploration of the interconnections between culture, identity, language and madness.