Saturday 22 February 2020, 1.30PM to 4.30pm
In the nineteenth century, institutions (asylums) to house people diagnosed medically as mad were built en masse throughout Europe, the colonies and in the USA. Some of the asylums had thousands of people living in them for decades. This course will explore the meaning of the asylum. For example, were these institutions a refuge, reformatory, or repository for those whose thinking, emotions, and behaviours were deemed to be signs of insanity or social unacceptability? Were they architectural signifiers of social control? Were they self-serving total institutions of psychiatric excess? Furthermore, the course will explore the legacy of the closing of the asylums, and the way forward for people today diagnosed with a mental disorder.
Tutor: Peter Morrall BA PGCE MSc PhD
Location: tbc