[Bilimsel Haber] CFP: Men and Madness (UK) (2/1/07; 6/28/07-6/30/07)

[Sule Tarakcioglu]

MEN AND MADNESS: Representing Male Psychopathology, Mental Disorder and
Deviancy in Modern and Contemporary Culture

English Research Institute, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK
28 - 30 June 2007

Confirmed keynote speakers:
Susan Bordo, University of Kentucky
Elisabeth Bronfen, University of Zurich
Richard Collier, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne
Mark Micale, University of Illnois
Sally Shuttleworth, University of Oxford


Traditionally it has been women and other social groups marked by an
alleged difference from standards of sanity and reason who have been
most vulnerable to designations of madness. The twentieth-century rise
of postmodernity, however, has introduced a remarkable shift in
perspective. Now it is femininity which is widely associated with
sanity, commonsense and progress, whereas masculinity has come to occupy
a position of volatile aberrance, anachronicity and crisis. While
masculinity used to deem itself incontestably rooted in the faculty of
reason, many of its most characteristic traits are now being recognised
as symptoms of a variety of psychopathologies, mental disorders or
cognitive impairments. In the age of postmodernity, the normative
standard of masculinity, and its propensity for oppressive and violent
self-assertion especially, has come to be interpreted as social deviance
and appears at present to be undergoing radical cultural revaluation as
a pathological affliction or compulsive disorder requiring urgent
therapeutic attention. If masculinity is currently perceived to be in
crisis, then this is mainly due to the fact that many of the
attributes, which traditionally constituted its strength and thus
legitimised its hegemonic status, tend now to be read as indicative of
an acutely troubled psychology of the male self.

Contributors to the conference are encouraged to trace the changes in
our cultural perception of what makes a healthy, sane, good and normal
man, and to do so by exploring the correlation between gender,
psychopathology and post/modernity, as well as the explicit or alleged
gender-specificity of certain mental disorders (e.g. hysteria, paranoia,
depression, schizophrenia, autism). The conference is interdisciplinary
and proposals are invited from the full spectrum of current scholarly,
creative and intellectual enquiry, including psychology, sociology,
history, literature, art, cultural theory, criminology, law, medical
science, politics, philosophy and psychoanalysis.

Proposals (200-300 words) for 20-minute presentations should be
submitted to Professor Berthold Schoene (b.schoene at mmu.ac.uk), the
conference organiser, by no later than 1 February 2007. A registration
form will become available at about the same time.


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