Course Schedule and Catalog

Long Title: ANTHROPOLOGY, PSYCHIATRY, AND MADNESS

Department: Anthropology

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Description: This seminar takes psychiatric practice as an object of anthropological investigation. It seeks to understand how cultural representations of mental health and illness shape and are shaped by psychiatric practices and discourse. We will draw on literature from anthropology, science and technology studies, and mad studies combined with cultural representations of madness. The goal is to explore reconceptualizations of mental phenomena as political, contextualizing them in terms of the various social, cultural, and historical contexts in which they are constituted. We will be particularly attentive to normalization processes and how they intersect with gender, race, sexuality, wealth, disability, and ethnicity. Topics include affect, anxiety, psychosis, and somatization; diagnostic standardization; the cultural history of psychiatry; institutionalization and deinstitutionalization; psychiatric professionalization; the globalization of Western psychiatric practice; critical anti-psychiatry movements, and Mad Studies. Graduate/Undergraduate Equivalency: ANTH 644. Mutually Exclusive: Cannot register for ANTH 444 if student has credit for ANTH 644.