Who Cares? Psychiatry in the English-speaking world: People and Places

Published on May 20, 2024 Updated on September 9, 2024
WhoCares? 2025 Conference
WhoCares? 2025 Conference

This international conference, to be held at Université Paris Nanterre on 6-7 February 2025, will welcome all historical approaches to psychiatry and more generally to the treatment of mental illness which reflect on the topic “People and places” from the Middle Ages to the end of the 20th century in English-speaking countries.

Dates

from February 6, 2025 to February 7, 2025

Location
Bâtiment Max Weber, salle des conférences

Who Cares? De la psychiatrie dans l’aire anglophone is a newly-formed group of scholars from the Université Paris Nanterre, Department of English Studies,  CREA EA 370, working specifically on the history of psychiatry in the English-speaking world. We are keen to encourage discussions on this subject and strengthen its international dimension. Our aim is also to foster further discussions on links and comparisons between historical perspectives on psychiatry in the French and the English-speaking worlds.  

See the full description of the project and the conference rationale on our website: https://whocares.hypotheses.org/


Topics will include:
  • Studies of therapeutic places and spaces (private/public institutions, families, community care)
  • Historical studies of psychiatric patients and their relations to their place of care/confinement
  • Individual and collective activities within the institution 
  • Art in hospitals 
  • Labelling patients / places
  • Institutionalisation / demise of mental hospitals/ places of care or deinstitutionalisation 
  • Therapeutic community movement (1960s)
  • Care in the community (1980s)
  • The role of professional carers in specific places
  • The importance of locality, architecture, specific geography in determining care
  • Circulations of patients/carers 
  • Historiographical approaches to people and places in relation to mental health issues
Partners :
Confluences, Politiques Américaines, Observatoire de l'Aire Britannique - CREA, Université Paris Nanterre
Institut Universitaire de France

Updated on 09 septembre 2024