H.I. Community Initiatives
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Community Initiatives
HUMANITIES INSTITUTE ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2008
The Other Side of Reason: The History of Madness Today
Center for the Arts, UB North Campus, October 31—November 1, 2008
Taking its inspiration from the recent publication of the complete English translation of Michel Foucault’s History of Madness, this conference aims to examine various histories of madness and what “madness” means today. Foucault reinvented history as a discourse capable of articulating the intimate yet hostile relationship between madness and reason, especially on the far side of the most ambitious attempts to uphold rationality as the basis of human institutions. The questions raised by History of Madness seem especially timely in an era that increasingly invokes “reason” to adjudicate unforeseen ethical and political crises. Yet the urgency of contemporary predicaments all too easily rationalizes the speedy elimination of “madness,” thereby prompting a return to forms of violent confinement—such as “indefinite detention”—that were the object of Foucault’s original critique. Mindful of this critique, our conference seeks to think through manifestations of madness that remain inseparable from its “others,” whether understood as reason, civilization, philosophy, normalcy, law, the university, and so on.
Conference Poster (forthcoming)
Pre-Conference Events
Information forthcoming
Conference Schedule
Information forthcoming
Friday, October 31
Saturday, November 1
Speakers
More Speaker Information Forthcoming
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Bruce Jackson has been the director of the University at Buffalo's Center for Studies in American Culture since 1972, and is the author of more than 20 other books on folklore, criminal law and fiction. His many awards and honors include his 2002 award of a Chevalier, l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France's highest honor in the arts and humanities.
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Richard Keller's research interests center on European and colonial medicine and public health, the history of psychiatry and psychoanalysis, the history of the human sciences, and science and race. He is the author of Colonial Madness: Psychiatry in French North Africa (U of Chicago P 2007). Nineteenth-century French writers and travelers imagined Muslim colonies in North Africa to be realms of savage violence, lurid sexuality, and primitive madness. Colonial Madness traces the genealogy and development of this idea from the beginnings of colonial expansion to the present, revealing the ways in which psychiatry has been at once a weapon in the arsenal of colonial racism, an innovative branch of medical science, and a mechanism for negotiating the meaning of difference for republican citizenship.
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Benjamin Reiss (Ph.D. UC Berkeley, 1997) specializes in 19th-century American literature and culture, with strong interests in popular culture, medicine, race, disability, and environmental issues. He is currently an editor of the Cambridge History of the American Novel, a collection of seventy new essays by leading scholars due to be published in 2009.
Reiss’ new book, Theaters of Madness: Insane Asylums and Nineteenth-Century American Culture (University of Chicago Press, 2008), explores the connections between early psychiatric institutions and cultural currents in the nineteenth century. The first part focuses on cultural activities such as theatrical performances, literary exercises, formal education, and religious worship that were an important part of the treatment of the mentally ill from approximately 1830-1870. The second half considers how popular and literary writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, Elizabeth Packard, E.D.E.N. Southworth, and Herman Melville responded to the emergence of these institutions in their work and in their lives.
Dr. Reiss teaches courses in traditional literary periods (such as the Nineteenth-Century American Novel and Antebellum American Literature), as well as courses that blend literary analysis with cultural studies, cultural and social history, and the history of medicine and disability. Reiss has also taught at Tulane University, and he is the recipient of grants and fellowships from the Mellon Foundation, the NEH, and the Louisiana Board of Regents.
Conference is free and open to the public. Advanced registration is not required.
Visitor Parking:
Valid permits must be properly displayed Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. - 3 p.m. Parking permits are not required on Saturday.
Parking for visitors is limited to certain lots and metered areas on each campus. Visitors to the North Campus can park in the Center for Tomorrow Lot off Flint Road, without a charge, and utilize our shuttle service. Additionally, on the North Campus, Visitor Paid Parking is available in the Fronczak Lot. There is an entry charge of $4.00 ($2.00 after 1:00 p.m.).
Persons invited to UB by a specific department or organization of the University are considered guests and are eligible for guest permits (no charge). Guest permits must be dated, and are valid in faculty/staff and student lots. One-day guest permits are also valid in Visitor Paid Parking areas. Permits should be obtained through the inviting department and in advance of arriving on campus. The Visitor Information Centers may issue Guest Permits, but only when the inviting department is reached to confirm the invitation.
Please contact Wendy McMenamin at 716.645.2711 to obtain a guest parking permit.
Printable campus maps and north campus buildings
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RELATED SEMINARS AND PRE-CONFERENCE EVENTS
Information forthcoming
PAST CONFERENCES
Browse our Annual Conference PDFs
2007 Human Trafficking
2006 Genealogies of the Humanities
2005 New Futures: Humanities, Theory, Arts
Visit our Humanities Calendar for a detailed listing of all humanities-related events and activities at UB
or contact: ub-humanities-institute@buffalo.edu