“In Treatment: Psychiatry and the Archives of Modern Sexuality”

with Regina Kunzel, Princeton University — Doris Stevens Professor in Women's Studies and History;  Director, Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies

co-sponsored by USC American Studies and Ethnicity, History, and Gender Studies.

In the mid-twentieth-century U.S., psychiatrists were among the most powerful arbiters of judgment and authority over sexual and gender difference. This talk explores the encounter of sexual- and gender-variant people with psychiatry and psychoanalysis and examines the role of psychiatric scrutiny and stigma in the making of modern sexuality. Focusing on the archive of St. Elizabeths Hospital, the federal hospital for the mentally ill in Washington, DC, Kunzel reflects on its meaning and challenges to queer history.