91制片厂

鈥淢adness鈥� evokes images of rambling, potentially violent, individuals on the margins of society. How did historical attitudes to insanity evolve in early modern and modern Eurasia? Were madpeople always ostracized or were they simply objects of sympathy and pity? What did hospitals and other networks of care and healing look like for mentally ill patients? In poetry, the pain of separation of the lover from their beloved produced lovesickness. Finally, demonic possession of the brain by jinns (Islamic spirits) was thought to cause madness. How can we understand the literary, religious and supernatural world of these actors without dismissing it? This course will take a holistic view of insanity while engaging with the rise of asylums or other lunatic institutions.