Events & Calendars In the Shadow of Diagnosis: Psychiatric Power and Queer Life

The Sexuality, Women's and Gender Studies Department presents:

Professor Regina Kunzel, Larned Professor of History and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Yale University, will speak about her forthcoming book In the Shadow of Diagnosis: Psychiatric Power and Queer Life.

Beginning in the mid-20th century, psychiatrists diagnosed homosexuality and gender variance as mental disorders that they claimed to be able to treat and “cure.”  That stigmatizing diagnosis sanctioned larger structures of discrimination and cast a stigmatizing pall over gay men, lesbians, and gender non-conforming people for decades. It also granted psychiatrists tremendous authority, underwriting their collaborations with the US state and strengthening its carceral apparatus.  Drawing on a collection of previously unexamined case files, Kunzel explores the significance of the encounter between psychiatry and queer and gender-variant people.

Free and open to the public. Co-sponsored by the Lamont Lectureship for a Peaceful World.

Amherst College strives for our campus experiences to be universally designed and usable by all people to the extent possible. Please contact us with any accommodations that you require to participate in this event.