Topics in Anthropology (290-0-2)

Topic

Madness and Media

Instructors

Rebecca Seligman
847/491-7207
1810 Hinman Ave., Room #204, EV Campus

Meeting Info

University Hall 312: Tues 1:00PM - 3:50PM

Overview of class

In what seems to be an age of unprecedented global distress, what is the role of media in shaping understandings and experiences of mental illness? Western psychiatric frameworks are increasingly defining mental health/illness around the world. These frameworks are also circulated via Western media narratives that shape the meanings people associate with mental health and illness. What other narratives of mental health might be told? What experiences of distress and resilience are obscured by these dominant frameworks? In this class, we will critically examine dominant U.S. models of mental health and illness and ask what underlying cultural assumptions and expectations about personhood, emotion, mind and body, are embedded in these narratives. We will analyze the political and social implications of these representations in film and television and how they reinforce or re-imagine our assumptions about mental health. Through a combination of engagement with scholarship on culture and mental health, media studies, and our own critical analyses of media objects, we will explore these questions and think together about how to rewrite media narratives in ways that better reflect the broad spectrum of experience.

Learning Objectives

Pose questions about mental health and media narratives effectively; Identify and evaluate evidence related to different perspectives on mental health; Analyze media representation using the concepts and tools from class; Construct persuasive arguments and evaluate the critiques and arguments of others; Express your ideas clearly in written and verbal form

Class Materials (Required)

Articles on Canvas; Films on course reserves

Enrollment Requirements

Enrollment Requirements: Reserved for Anthropology majors and minors until the end of preregistration, after which time enrollment will be open to everyone who has taken the prerequisites.