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

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.  

CONFERENCE PROGRAMME

Who Cares? Psychiatry in the English-speaking world:
People and Places
International Conference Université Paris Nanterre 6-8 February 2025
 

Organising committee: Cécile Birks, Claire Deligny, Laurence Dubois, Elisabeth Fauquert (Université Paris Nanterre) & Laetitia Sansonetti (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle).
Scientific committee: Cécile Birks (Université Paris Nanterre), Claire Deligny (Université Paris Nanterre), Laurence Dubois (Université Paris Nanterre), Elisabeth Fauquert (Université Paris Nanterre), Hervé Guillemain (Université du Mans), Julie Le Gac (Université Paris Nanterre & Institut Universitaire de France), Fabienne Moine (Université Paris-Est Créteil), Michel Prum (Université Paris Cité) &  Laetitia Sansonetti (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle).

DAY 1 : THURSDAY, 6 February 2025
Salle des conférences, Bâtiment Max WEBER, Université Paris Nanterre

8:45 – 9:15 Welcome & opening of the conference
9:15 – 9:30 Opening speech, Françoise KRÁL (director of the CREA research laboratory, Université Paris Nanterre)
9:30 – 10:30 KEYNOTE 1 Rory DU PLESSIS (University of Pretoria): “Humanising stories of care and connection: placing the chronic patients of the Fort England Hospital, South Africa, 1890-1950”
Chair: Michel PRUM (Université Paris Cité)

10:30 – 10:50 Coffee Break

10:50 – 12:50 Panel 1 – Racial bias, migration and psychiatry
Chair: Michel PRUM (Université Paris Cité)
10:50 – 11:10 Cécile BIRKS (Université Paris Nanterre): “ Segregation and racial bias in the Cape Colony mental institutions, 1890-1910” 
11:10 – 11:30 Samantha HOSEIN  (University of the West Indies): “St Ann’s Mental Asylum: External and Internal Determinants of Mental Healthcare Development in Trinidad and Tobago, 1900- 1939”
11:30 – 11:50 Léna MONEME (University of Luxembourg): “The repatriations of immigrant patients from the UK: administrative practices and psychiatric perspectives (1950s-1970s)”
11:50 – 12:10 Elodie EDWARDS-GROSSI (Université Paris Dauphine-PSL & Institut Universitaire de France) & Christopher D.E. WILLOUGHBY (University of Nevada, Las Vegas): “Thinking through carceral logics in psychiatry: revisiting race and marginality in the U.S. today”
12:10 – 12:50  Q&A

12:50-2  Lunch Break

2 – 3:30 Panel 2 – Outside the walls of mental health institutions
Chair: Elisabeth FAUQUERT (Université Paris Nanterre)
2 – 2:20 Laurence GERVAIS (Université Paris Nanterre): “Queering mental health: From pathologisation and backlash to mutual-aid and radical care”
2:20 – 2:40 Cecilia SMITH (Université Côte d’Azur): “Homelessness, psychiatric care and deinstitutionalization in Greater Boston since the 1960s”
2:40 – 3 Rebecca WYNTER (University of Amsterdam): “People Out of Place: Policing Mental Distress on London’s Streets since 1890”
3 – 3:30  Q&A

3:30 – 3:45 Coffee Break

3:45 – 5:45 Panel 3 – Psychiatry and war
Chair: Hervé GUILLEMAIN (Université du Mans)
3:45 – 4:05 Rachel DITCHFIELD (University of Liverpool & the Imperial War Museum): “The impact of the First World War on the therapeutic spaces of Bethlem Royal Hospital”
4:05 – 4:25 Claire DELIGNY (Université Paris Nanterre): “Displacing people: the Lancashire lunatic asylums at war (1914-1922)”
4:25 – 4:45 Rob ELLIS (Manchester Metropolitan University) & Ute OSWALD (University of Huddersfield): “Asylum: Refugees and Mental Health. Belgians in British Asylums 1914-1918”
4:45 – 5:05 Julie LE GAC (Université Paris Nanterre & Institut Universitaire de France): “‘His Patient is the Army rather than the Individual’: Military Psychiatrists and British soldiers during the Second World War”
5:05 – 5:45 Q&A

5:45 – 6:00 Break

6 – 6:30 Poster Presentation in the hall (Master’s Students from Paris Nanterre and Sorbonne Nouvelle)
6:30 Cocktail reception
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DAY 2 : FRIDAY, 7 February 2025
Salle des conférences, Bâtiment Max WEBER, Université Paris Nanterre
9 – 9:15  Welcome coffee
9:15 – 10:15 KEYNOTE 2 Susan HOGAN (University of Derby & Institute of Mental Health, University of Nottingham): “Therapeutic Arts in Britain with a Focus on Britain’s First Arts-Based Therapeutic Community: Withymead”
Chair: Charlotte GOULD (Université Paris Nanterre)
10:15 – 11:15 Panel 4 – Art and creativity
Chair: Charlotte GOULD (Université Paris Nanterre)
10:15 – 10:35 Rachel WILSON (Goldsmiths, University of London): “Institutional Psychotherapy: mobilising aesthetic practice in contemporary mental health institutions”
10:35 – 10:55 Fabienne MOINE (Université Paris-Est Créteil): “‘The silver lining of the dark cloud of insanity’: asylums and ‘lunatic poetry’” (Britain, 1840s-1870s)
10:55 – 11:15  Q&A

11:15 – 11:30 Coffee Break

11:30 – 1  Panel 5 – Conceptualising places of care
Chair: Naomi TOTH (Université Paris Nanterre & Institut Universitaire de France)
11:30 – 11:50 Nicolas BOILEAU & Victoria FERNANDEZ (Aix-Marseille Université): “Don’t we all care? Thinking about the hospital as a place of commonality rather than as a common place”
11:50 – 12:10 Susan BARRETT (Université Bordeaux Montaigne): “Lost in Transition: Who cares about mentally-ill young adults?”
12:10 – 12:30 Louise HIDE (Birkbeck, University of London).: “‘Too passive to present any problem to management’: the psychiatric hospital as a technology of control”
12:30 – 1 Q&A

1 – 2:15 Lunch break

2:15 – 4:15 Panel 6 – Places of care in England 
Chair: Anatole Le Bras (Université Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines)
2:15 – 2:35 Hilary MARLAND (University of Warwick): “‘Never in asylum before’: Mental Disorder and Childbirth in Colney Hatch Asylum, London, 1890s-1920s”
2:35 – 2:55 Han DEE (Queen Mary University of London): “Broadmoor: ‘It’s A Good Home Ain’t It?’ Approaching location to discover neglected histories”
2:55 – 3:15 Leonard SMITH, (University of Birmingham): “Family, Domesticity and the English Private Madhouse, 1600 – 1875” 
3:15 – 3:35 Claire DELIGNY & Laurence DUBOIS (Université Paris Nanterre):   “‘A kind and judicious chaplain may be a valuable auxiliary to the physician’ : Chaplains at Hanwell and Rainhill asylums (1838-1886)”
3:35 – 4:15 Q&A

4:15 – 4:30 Coffee break

4:30 – 6  Panel 7 – Early Labellings
Chair: Laetitia SANSONETTI (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle)
4:30 – 4:50 Louise FANG (Université Sorbonne Paris Nord): “Musgrave v. Mounson (1623): exploring the shortcomings of early modern inquisitions of lunacy”
4:50 – 5:10 Beatrice FUGA (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle): “Compulsive, Convulsive, Conniving. Eighteenth-century Nymphomaniacs in French and English Medical Texts”
5:10 – 5:30 Mathilde VIALARD (Université de Bourgogne): “‘Who cares’ about Hypochondria? An Overview of an Often-Forgotten Mental Disorder”
5:30 – 6 Q&A

6 – 6:40 Psychiatry on screen Chair : Serge CHAUVIN (Université Paris Nanterre)
6 – 6:20 Jocelyn DUPONT (Université de Perpignan): “Psychiatric Spaces in Early 1960s American Cinema”
6:20 – 6:40 Q&A
6:40 – 7 Closing speech, Who Cares? committee members
 
Dinner in town (conference delegates only)

DAY 3: SATURDAY, 8 February
Hôpital de la Pitié-Salpêtrière, Assistance Publique Hôpitaux de Paris, Bd de l’Hôpital, 75013 PARIS
10-12 noon  Guided tour and conference (in English) of the  Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital (conference delegates only)

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