Stephen T. Casper, PhD
Professor of History
Clarkson University
Abstract: The observation that neurological illnesses follow recurrent hits to the head was tempered by the terms that first called the diseases into scientific existence: “punch-drunk,” “slugnutty,” “slaphappy,” “goofy,” “punchy,” and a host of other colloquialisms accompanying class identities. Thus the discovery of disease and its medicalization ran straight into a countervailing belief about losers—losers in boxing, losers in life, losers in general. To medicalize such individuals was to fly in the face of a culture that made them jokes. Yet a subculture began to emerge around pathological understandings: first in medicine, then in journalism, then in the courts, and finally with patient accounts about illness. This talk is offered in conjunction with the Center’s virtual art exhibition, Experience, Integration, Expression: The Work of Norman Klenicki. Klenicki took up boxing to address bullying he experienced as a Jewish boy in Brooklyn, and painted images of boxing that explore it as a sport at the intersection of dance, masculinity, and violence.
School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences Bioethics and Health Humanities Lecture, co-sponsored by the Center for Bioethics & Health Law
Catalog of Opportunities Event
Location and Address
Online