Giorgio de Chirico, “The Seer,” Paris, winter 1914-15
Madness and Modernism Symposium | Friday 11 May 2018 | Durham University
Madness and Modernism: Insanity in the Light of Modern Art, Literature and Thought is the magnum opus of the distinguished clinical psychologist and phenomenologist of psychopathology Louis A. Sass. Twenty-five years after its initial publication by Harvard University Press, a revised edition, published by Oxford University Press in 2017, is introducing new readers to one of the most complex and compelling accounts of the phenomenology of schizophrenia and its reciprocally illuminating relationship with a modernism characterised by paradox and hyperreflexivity, self-consciousness and self-alienation.
A symposium to celebrate, interrogate and reflect upon the significance and wide-ranging influence of Madness and Modernism will be held at Durham University on Friday 11 May 2018. The programme opens with Louis Sass in conversation with Patricia Waugh, modernist literary critic, intellectual historian and co-investigator on interdisciplinary Hearing the Voice project. Contributions are then invited from scholars in any discipline whose work directly engages, contributes to or complicates the arguments and approach of Madness and Modernism. If you would like to present at the symposium, please send abstracts of no more than 200 words as well as a short bio-note to the convenor, Angela Woods, by Thursday 29 March 2018. Notification of acceptance will be by Wednesday 4 April.
The symposium is jointly hosted by Hearing the Voice and the Centre for Medical Humanities and funded by the Wellcome Trust. It will be free to attend and registrations will open in April pending final confirmation of the programme.