HSTM60692
Madness and Society in the Modern Age
15
Semester 2
Postgraduate Taught
Level 7
Carsten Timmermann
Unit coordinator
Centre for History of Science, Technology & Medicine (L5)
1
FHEQ level (Framework for Higher Education Qualifications) ' Masters/Integrated Masters P4 '
European Credit Transfer & Accumulation System Rating : 7.5
<p>This unit explores the history of mental illness from the late eighteenth century to the present. It examines how insanity has been understood, treated, and represented within larger social, cultural, and intellectual frameworks; it will also relate changing ideas about and approaches to mental illness, health, and functioning to larger questions in the history of the medical and biological sciences. </p>
<p>This unit explores the history of mental illness from the late eighteenth century to the present. It examines how insanity has been understood, treated, and represented within larger social, cultural, and intellectual frameworks; it will also relate changing ideas about and approaches to mental illness, health, and functioning to larger questions in the history of the medical and biological sciences. Our focus will be on developments in Britain, but with frequent reference to developments in Continental Europe and in North America. Topics include: the rise of the asylum in the 19th century; scientific and popular understandings of mental illness since 1800; race and gender in relation to mental illness; biological and surgical therapies; the relationship of psychiatry to the rest of medicine; discourses around mental health since the Second World War and the decline of the asylum.</p>
<ul> <li>Provide students with an overview of the major changes in the understanding, management and meaning of mental illness from 1800 to the present;</li> <li>Help students to develop an understanding of how these changes have been approached and explained by historians and social scientists;</li> <li>Locate the changes in their broader social, cultural, intellectual, and political contexts;</li> <li>Consider how this history has shaped contemporary debates around mental health, psychiatry, and neuroscience;</li> <li>Develop facility in analysing and discussing relevant secondary literature and locating primary sources on the history of mental illness.</li></ul><div> </div>
<p>-<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Demonstrate extensive knowledge of changing understandings of and approaches to mental illness since circa 1800.</p>
<div> -<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Place understandings of the mind and approaches to mental illness in their historical contexts</div><div> -<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Understand secondary literature on the history of mental illness in their theoretical and historiographical contexts</div><div> -<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Critique approaches to mental illness based on an understanding of their history</div><div> -<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Identify potentially fruitful topics for research projects in the history of psychiatry and mental illness</div><div> </div>
<div> -<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Place understandings of the mind and approaches to mental illness in their historical contexts</div><div> -<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Understand secondary literature on the history of mental illness in their theoretical and historiographical contexts</div><div> -<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Critique approaches to mental illness based on an understanding of their history</div><div> -<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Identify potentially fruitful topics for research projects in the history of psychiatry and mental illness</div><div> </div>
<div> -<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Discuss complex issues based on an understanding of their history</div><div> -<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Work independently on a research project</div><div> -<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Work effectively in a team, leading or following when appropriate, and contributing and listening.</div><div> </div>
<p>The unit will be taught in six two-hour seminar sessions, where we will discuss a range of required readings (primary and secondary). While students are asked to read all required readings for the week, they are assigned individual readings which they introduce and place in their historiographical contexts. Readings and additional materials will usually be made available through Blackboard. In addition to the seminars, which run over six weeks, students are strongly encouraged to attend the lectures delivered for the undergraduate sister unit, which runs over 12 weeks, through the whole semester.</p>
2
Written assignment (inc essay)
100%
<p>Detailed written feedback from primary assessor. </p>
MSc Hist of Sci, Tech & Med FT
MSc Hist of Sci, Tech & Med FT
PGDT Taught Component
Optional
MSc Hist of Sci, Tech & Med PT
MSc Hist of Sci, Tech & Med PT
PGDT Taught Component
Optional
N
<ul> <li> Andrew Scull, Madness in Civilization: A Cultural History of Insanity, from the Bible to Freud, from the Madhouse to Modern Medicine (London: Thames & Hudson, 2015). </li> <li> Edward Shorter, A History of Psychiatry: From the Era of the Asylum to the Age of Prozac (Chichester: Wiley, 1997). </li> <li> W. F Bynum, Roy Porter, and Michael Shepherd, eds., The Anatomy of Madness: Essays in the History of Psychiatry, Volumes 1-3 (London: Routledge, 2004</li> <li> Greg Eghigian, ed., The Routledge History of Madness and Mental Health, Routledge Histories (New York: Routledge, 2017). </li></ul>
Seminars
12
0
138