BSOC 2721

Last Updated

  • Schedule of Classes - February 7, 2022 11:35AM EST
  • Course Catalog - January 18, 2022 1:31PM EST

BSOC 2721
History of Mental Health and Mental Illness in the United States

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2021-2022.

This course examines the history of mental illness—its conception and treatment—in the United States, from the early 1800s to the present, focusing on four major questions: (1) How have understandings of mental illness been developed and deployed by psychologists, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, and social workers, and how have those understandings varied across time and place? (2) How have understandings and treatments of mental illness shaped, and been shaped by, conceptions of race, class, gender, and sexuality? (3) In what ways have treatment of mental illness and "social deviance" operated as a form of social control? (4) How do conceptions of mental illness come to circulate in popular culture and everyday life? Pairing historical scholarship with autobiographical writing and case studies from the 1800s to the present, the course moves chronologically in order to track, and draw connections between, a wide range of movements within American psychological and social welfare history, including the creation and closing of mental hospitals, the pathologization of racial, gender, and sexual difference, psychopharmacology, anti-psychiatry, and the politics of diagnosis.

When Offered Spring.

Distribution Category (HA-AS, HST-AS, SCD-AS)

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Syllabi: none

  •   Regular Academic Session.  Choose one lecture and one discussion. Combined with: AMST 2722, HIST 2721, STS 2721

  • 3 Credits Stdnt Opt

  • 17975 BSOC 2721   LEC 001

    • TR Mcgraw Hall 165
    • Jan 24 - May 10, 2022

    • Vider, S

  • Instruction Mode: In Person

    Instructor Consent Required (Add)

  • 17976 BSOC 2721   DIS 201

  • Instruction Mode: In Person

    Instructor Consent Required (Add)

  • 17977 BSOC 2721   DIS 202

  • Instruction Mode: In Person

    Instructor Consent Required (Add)

  • 17978 BSOC 2721   DIS 203

    • R Uris Hall 312
    • Jan 24 - May 10, 2022

    • Staff

  • Instruction Mode: In Person

    Instructor Consent Required (Add)

  • 17979 BSOC 2721   DIS 204

    • R Uris Hall G88
    • Jan 24 - May 10, 2022

    • Staff

  • Instruction Mode: In Person

    Instructor Consent Required (Add)

  • 20298 BSOC 2721   DIS 205

    • R Uris Hall 498
    • Jan 24 - May 10, 2022

    • Staff

  • Instruction Mode: In Person

    Instructor Consent Required (Add)

  • 20299 BSOC 2721   DIS 206

    • F Uris Hall 498
    • Jan 24 - May 10, 2022

    • Staff

  • Instruction Mode: In Person

    Instructor Consent Required (Add)