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Module Catalogue

HI383-30 Madness and Society

Department
History
Level
Undergraduate Level 3
Module leader
Hilary Marland
Credit value
30
Module duration
22 weeks
Assessment
60% coursework, 40% exam
Study location
University of Warwick main campus, Coventry

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Introductory description

The 30 CATS final-year undergraduate module will utilise secondary literature and a selection of primary (including online) sources to explore the relationship between madness and society from the 18th century to the present day. A major focus of the module will be the rise of institutional approaches to the treatment of mental disorder from 18th-century ‘mad-houses’ to asylums governed according to the dictates of moral management, and then towards the end of the 19th century vast establishments ‘silted’ up with ‘chronic’ long-term patients. The module is largely centred on British sources, but includes material on North America, France, and colonial settings.

Module web page

Module aims

We will seek to understand lay and medical responses to mental disorder, based on scientific, cultural, intellectual and popular ideas and influences. One session will be devoted to the patient’s view, but throughout the module we will attempt to be sensitive to the position and response of patients (and their families) to the label of insanity. We will also explore the apparently concomitant rise of psychiatry, as well as the responses of psychiatry’s opponents. We will focus on debates about the possibilities of offering care and treatment outside an asylum context and the shift to ‘care in the community’ with its mixed outcomes at the end of the 20th century. Different approaches to the classification of insanity will be explored, alongside treatment regimes, changes in definitions, explanations and depictions of madness, as expressed in psychiatric texts, case notes, asylum archives, legal records, the reports of reformers and Lunacy Commissioners, novels, art, photography, film and patient narratives. We will seek to understand the economics of incarceration and care, the input of policy makers, and the role of religion, class, gender, race and ethnicity, family and community in defining insanity and its treatment.

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

  1. The Madness of King George: A Turning Point in Attitudes to Mental Disorder?
  2. Mind Forg’d Manacles: Madness in the 18th Century
  3. The Trade in Lunacy: Private Asylums in the 18th Century
  4. Reform, Moral Management and the York Retreat
  5. Spaces of Confinement: The Asylum as Utopia in the 19th Century
  6. Foucault’s Great Confinement of the Insane
  7. The Female Malady? Madness and Gender
  8. Psychiatry and the ‘Manufacture of Madness’
  9. Race, Colonial and Madness
  10. Ethnicity, Migration and Mental Illness
  11. Shattered Nerves
  12. Themes of Degeneration
  13. The Patient’s View
  14. Discourses, Therapies and Conflict: How to Heal the Mind in the 20th Century
  15. Male Hysteria: From Shell-Shock to Combat Exhaustion
  16. ‘Outside the Walls of the Asylum’: Anti-Psychiatry to Care in the Community

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

  • Demonstrate a systematic knowledge and understanding of the relationship between madness and society from the 18th century to the present day, including lay and medical responses to mental disorder, based on scientific, cultural, intellectual and popular ideas and influences
  • Critically analyse and evaluate a broad range of primary sources (including psychiatric texts, case notes, asylum archives, legal records, the reports of reformers and Lunacy Commissioners, novels, art, photography, film and patient narratives) relating to the historical controversies surrounding the study of madness
  • Effectively communicate ideas, and make informed, coherent and persuasive arguments, relating to the history of mental disorder.
  • Critically review and consolidate theoretical, methodological, and historiographical ideas relating to the history of mental disorder

Indicative reading list

Reading lists can be found in Talis

Specific reading list for the module

Subject specific skills

See learning outcomes.

Transferable skills

See learning outcomes.

Study time

Type Required
Seminars 18 sessions of 2 hours (12%)
Tutorials 4 sessions of 1 hour (1%)
Private study 260 hours (87%)
Total 300 hours

Private study description

History modules require students to undertake extensive independent research and reading to prepare for seminars and assessments. As a rough guide, students will be expected to read and prepare to comment on three substantial texts (articles or book chapters) for each seminar taking approximately 3 hours. Each assessment requires independent research, reading around 6-10 texts and writing and presenting the outcomes of this preparation in an essay, review, presentation or other related task.

Costs

No further costs have been identified for this module.

You must pass all assessment components to pass the module.

Students can register for this module without taking any assessment.

Assessment group D1
Weighting Study time Eligible for self-certification
Assessment component
Seminar contribution 10% No
Reassessment component
1000 word reflection Yes (extension)
Assessment component
1500 word essay 10% Yes (extension)
Reassessment component is the same
Assessment component
3000 word essay 40% Yes (extension)
Reassessment component is the same
Assessment component
In-person Examination 40% No
Reassessment component is the same
Feedback on assessment

Written feedback provided via Tabula; optional oral feedback in office hours.

Past exam papers for HI383

Courses

This module is Optional for:

  • Year 3 of UENA-VQ32 Undergraduate English and History

This module is Option list A for:

  • Year 3 of UHIA-V100 Undergraduate History
  • Year 4 of UHIA-V101 Undergraduate History (with Year Abroad)
  • Year 4 of UITA-R3V2 Undergraduate History and Italian

This module is Option list B for:

  • Year 3 of UHIA-V1V5 Undergraduate History and Philosophy
  • Year 4 of UHIA-V1V6 Undergraduate History and Philosophy (with Year Abroad)
  • Year 3 of UHIA-VM11 Undergraduate History and Politics
  • Year 4 of UHIA-VM12 Undergraduate History and Politics (with Year Abroad)
  • Year 3 of UHIA-VL13 Undergraduate History and Sociology
  • Year 4 of UHIA-VL14 Undergraduate History and Sociology (with Year Abroad)