FHI Faculty Bookwatch: New Books in the Mind Sciences

Great minds think about the mind! This Faculty Bookwatch roundtable discussion featured three faculty authors who have just published new books about the history of the mind sciences that raise provocative questions about what it means to study the psyche in the twenty-first century.

• Carolyn Laubender, Associate Professor, Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex; Visiting Professor, Program in Literature
Author of "The Political Clinic: Psychoanalysis and Social Change in the Twentieth Century" ( ⁨‪@columbiauniversitypress6378‬, 2024).
Find her book here: https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-pol...

• Cate I. Reilly, Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor, Program in Literature
Author of "Psychic Empire: Literary Modernism and the Clinical State" (‪@columbiauniversitypress6378‬, 2024)
Find her book here: https://cup.columbia.edu/book/psychic...

• Nima Bassiri, Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor, Program in Literature
Author of "Madness and Enterprise: Psychiatry, Economic Reason, and the Emergence of Pathological Value" (‪@universityofchicagopress958‬, 2024)
Find his book here: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/...

Their unique but intersecting work shows how psychoanalysis and the classification of psychological disorders not only reshaped clinical treatment but also transformed ideas about politics, economics, and even consciousness, while changes in the modern world, in turn, changed psychoanalysis in theory and practice. Part of a clinical turn in critical thought, these books highlight the surprising implications of changes in the way mental life has been scientifically studied and represented, from the 19th to the 21st century. Their insights complicate and challenge scholarly work in a range of disciplines from literary theory to the history of science to political philosophy.

Accompanying the three authors to participate in the conversation are three Duke graduate students working in related humanities fields:

RESPONDENTS

• Britt Edelen, PhD candidate in English literature at ‪@dukeuniversity‬

• Zeena Yasmine Fuleihan, PhD candidate in the Program in Literature and Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies at ‪@dukeuniversity‬

Mike Sockol, PhD candidate in the Program in Literature and Media Studies ‪@dukeuniversity‬

Moderated by Dr. Ranjana Khanna, director of the ‪@FranklinHumanities‬

This event was co-hosted by the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute and the Duke Libraries and co-sponsored by the Publishing Humanities Initiative.

The Faculty Bookwatch program promotes interdisciplinary conversations on major recent books by Duke humanities, interpretive social sciences, and arts faculty members. Presented by the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute and the Duke University Libraries. Cosponsors are the Department of African and African American Studies and the Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies at Duke University.