University of California, Davis

Graduate Student, History

Thesis Title: Isolating Madness: Doctors, Families, and the Gendering of Psychiatric Authority in Nineteenth-Century France

About

I'm currently writing my dissertation under the direction of Ted Margadant, Catherine Kudlick, and Edward Ross Dickinson at UC Davis.

I argue that the construction of psychiatric authority in post-revolutionary France relied upon cultural attitudes toward familial order. Doctors modeled the asylum system upon the power relations of the middle-class household, presenting themselves as father-figures and patients as children in need of reformation. This conception of medical authority legitimated doctors’ roles. Yet it also gave critics the tools with which to critique the spread of psychiatric power and unintentionally justified the professional aspirations of certain women. 

Using cultural historical and micro-historical methods, I underscore the interconnections between medicine and society and trace the consequences of this relationship for doctors and patients alike.