HIST 4806A: Madness Past and Present
Winter 2025
Instructor: Professor James Miller
In this seminar we will explore the History of Madness from the nineteenth century to the present day. The geographical focus will be mostly on North America and the United Kingdom. The course will trace changing ideas about and definitions of Madness, including how it has been understood medically, socially, culturally, and personally. An important focus of the class will be on how individuals experienced being mad or of being declared mad by others, and on how they represented those experiences in various ways, such as art and memoir. The connections between Madness in the past and in the present will also be a central theme of the class.
Topics to be studied will include:
- The many meanings of “Madness”
- Asylums
- Psychiatry
- Treatment—Theories and Practices
- Psychiatric Survivor Movements
- Representations of Madness in culture (film, fiction, memoir, art)
Course Format
This is an online and asynchronous course. So, there are no in-person classes but there are weekly assignments that must be completed in the week for which they are assigned. If you can commit to completing regular but smaller assignments, you will do well in this class. If you can’t, you won’t.
Assignments and Assessment
These have not been finalized yet, but will likely consist of something along these lines:
- Weekly Written Discussion Group Contributions
- Regular Short Writing Assignments
- One Longer research assignment
If you have any questions about the course, please contact me at james.miller@carleton.ca