Miami University

Irvin Lecture on "Politics and Insanity: Archiving Madness"

02/03/2010

Laure Murat, associate professor of French and Francophone studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, will present “Politics and Insanity: Archiving Madness” at 4 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 11, in 40 Irvin Hall. Her talk, given in French, is sponsored by the L.P. Irvin Fund of the department of French and Italian.

Murat, whose research interests include cultural history and the history of psychiatry, will discuss the status of psychiatric archives in the history of madness, and what archives can teach us about the relations between politics and insanity.

From 1789 to 1871 French physicians coined many “diseases” related to political events, according to Murat, such as “ambitious monomania,” “revolutionary neurosis” and “morbus democraticus.”

Exploring French history through the registers of lunatic asylums, Murat’s research is based on unpublished material of the nineteenth century. Her talk is an introduction to her forthcoming book, The Man Who Mistook Himself for Napoleon, which explores the relationship between archives, ideology and pathology.

For more information, contact the department of French and Italian at 529-7508.