GWS 610 - WOMEN AND ‘MADNESS’

College of Arts & Sciences

Credits: 3

This course explores the social construction of mental illness as it pertains to gender. We will consult narratives from different disciplines: Literature, Psychology, Cultural Studies, Anthropology, History and Feminist Theory. Our focus will concern the ways in which all women are constructed as ‘sick’ as well as the perspectives of women who feel a sense of psychic dislocation and disability in their lives. Readings by women of color and lesbians will suggest the particular ways culture defines such women as ‘abnormal.’