In The Protest Psychosis, psychiatrist and cultural critic Jonathan Metzl tells the shocking story of how schizophrenia became the diagnostic term overwhelmingly applied to African American men at the Ionia State Hospital in Ionia, Michigan; and how events at Ionia mirrored national conversations that increasingly linked blackness, madness, and civil rights. As he demonstrates, far from resulting from the racist intentions of doctors or the symptoms of specific patients, racial schizophrenia grew from a much wider set of cultural shifts that defined the thoughts, actions, and even the politics of black men as being inherently insane. Jonathan Metzl is associate professor of psychiatry and women's studies and director of the Culture, Health, and Medicine Program at the University of Michigan. A 2008 Guggenheim award recipient, his books include Prozac on the Couch and Difference and Identity in Medicine. This event is cohosted by the Department of Women's Studies and IRWG, and is free and open to the public. Books will be available for purchase and signing.

This event is co-sponsored by School of Social Work.