Presented By: Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies
EIHS Lecture: Charcot's Brazilian Monkey: Religion, Psychiatry and Nearhuman Attraction
Paul C. Johnson, University of Michigan
NOTE: This event has been rescheduled to Tuesday, March 12.
Two Rosalies: The first was one of pre-psychiatry’s most famous patients, Rosalie Leroux, who entered the care of a rising medical star in late-nineteenth-century Paris, Jean-Martin Charcot. The second Rosalie was Charcot’s pet Brazilian monkey. Rosalie Leroux was a human who sometimes became bestial; Rosalie Monkey was a beloved animal who Charcot loved like a child. Professor Johnson invites the two into conversation via the joined stories of late-nineteenth-century psychiatry in France and in Brazil, and the joined stories of an emperor, a neurologist, a patient, and a monkey. Together they honed ideas of “automatic” versus “free” action and the edges of the human.
Paul Christopher Johnson is professor of History, Afroamerican and African Studies, and the Doctoral Program in Anthropology and History at the University of Michigan. He is also co-editor of the journal Comparative Studies in Society and History. He wrote Secrets, Gossip, and Gods: The Transformation of Brazilian Candomblé (Oxford, 2002), Diaspora Conversions: Black Carib Religion and the Recovery of Africa (California, 2007), and Ekklesia: Three Inquiries on Church and State (Chicago, 2018), with Winnifred F. Sullivan and Pamela E. Klassen. He edited Spirited Things: The Work of "Possession" in Afro-Atlantic Religions (Chicago, 2014), and is working on a new book called Automaton Autonomy: Religion, Agency and the Nearhuman.
Free and open to the public.
This event is part of the Thursday Series of the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies. It is made possible by a generous contribution from Kenneth and Frances Aftel Eisenberg.
Two Rosalies: The first was one of pre-psychiatry’s most famous patients, Rosalie Leroux, who entered the care of a rising medical star in late-nineteenth-century Paris, Jean-Martin Charcot. The second Rosalie was Charcot’s pet Brazilian monkey. Rosalie Leroux was a human who sometimes became bestial; Rosalie Monkey was a beloved animal who Charcot loved like a child. Professor Johnson invites the two into conversation via the joined stories of late-nineteenth-century psychiatry in France and in Brazil, and the joined stories of an emperor, a neurologist, a patient, and a monkey. Together they honed ideas of “automatic” versus “free” action and the edges of the human.
Paul Christopher Johnson is professor of History, Afroamerican and African Studies, and the Doctoral Program in Anthropology and History at the University of Michigan. He is also co-editor of the journal Comparative Studies in Society and History. He wrote Secrets, Gossip, and Gods: The Transformation of Brazilian Candomblé (Oxford, 2002), Diaspora Conversions: Black Carib Religion and the Recovery of Africa (California, 2007), and Ekklesia: Three Inquiries on Church and State (Chicago, 2018), with Winnifred F. Sullivan and Pamela E. Klassen. He edited Spirited Things: The Work of "Possession" in Afro-Atlantic Religions (Chicago, 2014), and is working on a new book called Automaton Autonomy: Religion, Agency and the Nearhuman.
Free and open to the public.
This event is part of the Thursday Series of the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies. It is made possible by a generous contribution from Kenneth and Frances Aftel Eisenberg.
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