History of Madness in Canada

The new History of Madness in Canada/Histoire de la folie au Canada Website went on-line October 31st, 2009.

We are delighted to announce that the entire website has been fully redesigned and now contains the following new content:

News from our Five-year national project on the history of deinstitutionalization in Canada, Open Doors/ Closed Ranks: Locating Mental Health after the Asylum.

Relaunched Education pages which feature three pilot secondary school lesson plans on the following topics: World War I and Shell Shock; and Defining Normal in Post-World War II Society; 1970s Patient Activism.  Revisit this section of the site on December 31st for the launch of a new set of interdisciplinary teaching materials on mental health for middle and secondary teachers and students.  The Youth and Mental Health: Addressing Stigma through Community-Informed Curriculum was done collaboratively by faculty at the University of Victoria and York University with community consultations in both locales.

The Archives pages of the website feature an exhibit on mental health history in British Columbia (including the story of the Colquitz Mental Home for ‘criminally insane’ men on Vancouver Island); a chronicle of psychiatric history in Québec based on the fonds of L’Institut universitaire en santé mentale de Québec; and an anthology of 19th- and early 20th-century annual reports, commentaries, personal accounts and other documents drawn from the digital collections of Canadiana.org.

Our Library pages offer an assortment of primary and secondary materials and a comprehensive bibliography of more than 800 sources addressing the history and culture of psychiatry, asylums, and mental ill health in Canada, with a strong presence of contributions from the psychiatric survivor and consumer communities.

Enjoy all of this and revisit the website to watch our projects and collections take shape.

For information regarding the website please contact:

Robert Menzies, Simon Fraser University: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Megan Davies, York University: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

CALL FOR PAPERS

Mennonites, Melancholy and Mental Health: A History Conference

Winnipeg, Friday-Saturday, October 8-9, 2010

Hosted by: The Chair in Mennonite Studies
Location: University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Manitoba, CANADA

Like all social groups, the Mennonites have experienced health issues in their history and 
– suffered from mental illness and been marginalized because of it;
– stigmatized mental illness;
– faced the gravest consequences of mental illness, including suicide;
– worked as mental health nurses, psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors, etc.;
– built mental health facilities;
– worked to integrate people living with metal illness into their communities;
– been clients, consumers or psychiatric survivors of mental health services;
– theologized on melancholy and sadness;
– deconstructed medical authority and “madness”; and
– engaged in creative ways to seek healing.

“Mennonites, Melancholy and Mental Health,” the seventh Divergent Voices of Canadian Mennonites (DVCM) history conference, invites proposals for scholarly papers on the history of mental illness, mental health stigmatization, and mental health practices among Mennonites in Canada and other parts of the world.

Conference paper submissions deadline: February 1, 2010.  Please send a 200-word proposal in a Word file to the conference organizer: Royden Loewen, Chair in Mennonite Studies at the University of Winnipeg < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >
 
Proposals should include a clear statement of the central theme or argument and a 100-word biography. Provide your name, academic affiliation (if applicable), and contact email address.

A selection of the conference papers will be published in Journal of Mennonite Studies, 2011.
 
Further details will be available early in 2010:
Visit: http://www.uwinnipeg.ca/academic/as/mennstudies

Organizing Committee:
Chris Dooley Dooley (York University); Irma Janzen (MCC Canada); Elizabeth Krahn (University of  Manitoba); Royden Loewen (University of Winnipeg); Ken Reddig (Eden Mental Health).
Major funder: Mennonite Central Committee Canada

For More Information call 204.786.9391 or email < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >

• Kum-Kum Bhavnani, Professor of Sociology, Women's Studies and Global Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara 
• John Cromby, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Loughborough University UK 
• Raquel Guzzo, Professor of Psychology at the University of Campinas and member of the, International Committee for Liberation Social Psychology
•  Lois Holzman, co-founder (with Fred Newman) and director of the East Side Institute for Group and Short Term Psychotherapy in New York City
•  Gordana Jovanovi, Associate Professor of Psychology at the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Serbia
• Athanasios Marvakisis, Associate Professor in Clinical Social Psychology at the School of Primary Education of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki/Greece
• Morten Nissen, Senior Lecturer /Associate Professor at the Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen
• Ian Parker, Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU)
• Carl Ratner, cultural psychologist and author of Cultural Psychology: A Perspective on Psychological Functioning and Social Reform (LEA)
• Hans Skott-Myhre, an interdisciplinary cultural theorist whose primary research area is the development of models of child and youth work
• Thomas Teo, Associate Professor in the History and Theory of Psychology Program at York University

CALL FOR PAPERS

Arts for Social and Environmental Justice (ASEJ) Symposium
May 13 - 15, 2010, Royal Conservatory, Toronto, Ontario

The Laurier Centre for Music in the Community (LcMc) and the Royal Conservatory (RCM), in partnership with ISIS-Canada and the European Graduate School, are hosting a symposium addressing arts education and its connection to social and environmental justice.

The term"education" is used in its broadest sense to denote both formal (e.g.,school) and informal (e.g., community-based) learning.

The three-day symposium will feature keynote speakers Rena Upitis, Danika Billie Littlechild, Stephen K. Levine, Carlos Silveira, and Max Wyman, as well as papers, workshops, and performances. This symposium invites submissions in the following categories:

1. Research presentations that deal with any aspect of the arts and social and/or environmental justice
2. Narrative papers describing practices in the educational or arts community dealing with the symposium themes
3. Interactive workshop sessions dealing with the symposium themes

To submit your work: Please e-mail your submissions as MS-Word documents to Dr. Ann Patteson.