Department of Science and Technology Studies
University College London
STS Seminar Series 2011-12
Term 2
All seminars take place on Mondays at 5.00pm
Venue: room 218 Chadwick Building, UCL
Building location:
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/estates/roombooking/building-location/?id=013
All seminars are open to the public
Monday 19 March
Richard Barnett (Wellcome Trust)
Dr. Lindsay’s Lemmings: Mad Beasts, Misanthropy and the Victorian Mind
In 'Mind in the Lower Animals in Health and Disease', published in 1879,
the Scottish psychiatrist William Lauder Lindsay abandoned his human
patients and turned to madness in the animal kingdom. Lindsay ranged
across continents and centuries, pillaging writers from Pliny to Darwin,
and ushering his readers into a dark, destabilised world of simian
neurosis and reptilian psychosis, suicidal scorpions and deranged,
Prufockian lemmings. In this talk I will grab Lindsay’s work by its
provocatively twitching tail, tracing its roots in European culture and
uncovering the hidden history of animal madness in Victorian science.
--
Dr. Chiara Ambrosio
Teaching Fellow in Philosophy of Science
Department of Science and Technology Studies
University College London
Gower Street
London WC1E 6BT
Tel. (+44) 02076790166
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/sts/staff/ambrosio
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/sts/
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/basc/
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