Spiritual Madness: Race, Psychiatry, and African American Religions

December 6, 2022 -
8:00am to 9:00am

Judith Weisenfeld, PhD
Agate Brown and George L. Collord Professor of Religion
Princeton University

This talk will explore late nineteenth and early twentieth-century psychiatric theories about race, religion, and the “normal mind.” It will demonstrate how white asylum doctors drew on works from popular and scientific racial discourse as well as History of Religions scholarship to make racialized claims about African Americans’ “traits of character, habit, and behavior.” This history of the intersections of psychiatry and African American religions sheds light on how ideas about race, religion, and mental normalcy shaped African American experience in courts and mental hospitals and the role of racialization of religion played more broadly in the history of medicine, legal history, and the history of disability.

Co-sponsored by the Center for Bioethics & Health Law, Department of Religious Studies, Jewish Studies Program, Palliative and Supportive Institute of UPMC, and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary Continuing Education Program

Catalog of Opportunities Event

For access to the lecture recording for personal viewing, contact bioethics@pitt.edu

Location and Address

Online