CFP: Insanity and the Lunatic Asylum in the Nineteenth Century

Insanity and the Lunatic Asylum in the Nineteenth Century
Birmingham City University
A one-day conference on Friday 13^th May 2011

Proposals due: 25 March

I always had a desire to know asylum life more thoroughly – a desire to be convinced that the most helpless of God’s creatures, the insane, were cared for kindly and properly. Nellie Bly

“And Something’s odd – within –
That person that I was –
And this One – do not feel the same –
Could it be Madness – this?” Emily Dickinson

The place where optimism flourishes most is the lunatic asylum. (Havelock Ellis)

This interdisciplinary conference will address a range of issues concerning the perception of insanity and madness in the nineteenth century, its manifestations and treatments, and the patients themselves. The conference will take place on Friday 13^th May, 2011, in the chapel of the Birmingham Lunatic Asylum, an impressive building used to restrain and treat patients from 1862 until 1964.

We invite papers on a range of subjects related to this theme. Please submit an abstract of 350 words to serena.trowbridge@bcu.ac.uk by 25^th March, 2011. Subjects covered might include:

•  The life of patients in lunatic asylums
• The literary treatment of madness and lunatic asylums
• Early psychiatry in the asylum
• The architecture and physical space of the lunatic asylum
• Artists and writers and insanity
• Poetry and madness
• Insanity and/or the asylum in the nineteenth-century novel