Biosciences, Health, and Humanities

The Humanities Research Center, with generous support from the Office of the Provost and the Dean of Humanities, has organized a mini-lecture series to address the role of the humanities raised by the university's new initiatives.

Past Events:

In Fall 2010, we welcomed Jonathan Metzl, Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Women's Studies and Director of the Program in Culture, Health, and Medicine at the University of Michigan. Metzl presented his talk, "The Protest Psychosis: Race, Stigma, and the Diagnosis of Schizophrenia" met with faculty and students to discuss his research, which productively navigates between humanistic and scientific boundaries. 

Jonathan M. Metzl, MD, PhD, is Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Women's Studies, Director, Program in Culture, Health, and Medicine, University of Michigan. A 2008 Guggenheim award recipient, Metzl has written extensively for medical, psychiatry, and popular publications. His books include Prozac on the Couch and Difference and Identity in Medicine.

In The Protest Psychosis, psychiatrist and cultural critic Jonathan Metzl tells the shocking story of how schizophrenia became the diagnostic term overwhelmingly applied to African American men at the Ionia State Hospital; and how events at Ionia mirrored national conversations that increasingly linked blackness, madness, and civil rights. This book provides a cautionary tale of how anxieties about race continue to impact doctor-patient interactions, even during our current, seemingly post-race era of genetics, pharmacokinetics, and brain scans.