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Event Recap: Madness Keyword Lecture
In this special lecture, Dr. Kylie M. Smith (Associate Professor, Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing) examined how segregation and incarceration shaped the history of psychiatry and our understanding of "madness," particularly in relation to Civil Rights activism.
Drawing upon her research for her book Jim Crow in the Asylum: Psychiatry and Civil Rights in the American South (UNC Press, 2025), Dr. Smith's lecture explored the ethical and archival challenges of studying psychiatric hospitals in the Jim Crow South and how this history informs current mental health disparities and the very legitimacy of psychiatry itself.
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About the Speaker
Dr. Kylie Smith is an Associate Professor, tenured, and the Andrew W. Mellon Faculty Fellow for Nursing and the Humanities and Associate Faculty in the Department of History at Emory. She teaches courses on the history of race in health care, critical theory, and nursing theory and philosophy in the School of Nursing and the Emory College of Arts and Sciences. Her research area is the history of psychiatry and she is the author of the award-winning book Talking Therapy: Knowledge and Power in American Psychiatric Nursing. Her new book entitled Jim Crow in the Asylum: Psychiatry and Civil Rights in the American South will be published by UNC Press and is supported by a grant from the National Library of Medicine (NIH).
