Lecture
Tuesday, May 27, 2014, 7 PM

Sander Gilman

Professor of the Liberal Arts and Sciences and Medicine, Emory University, Atlanta, Ga.

How Did Racism and Anti-Semitism Become Mental Illnesses?

Gesprächsleitung: Prof. Dr. Susan Neiman, Potsdam

In 2012, an interdisciplinary team of scientists at the University of Oxford reported the results of a drug trial, which claimed that a drug could reduce implicit racial bias among its users. Shortly after the experiment, an article in Time Magazine, citing the study, asked the question: Is racism becoming a mental illness? But the idea of racism as a mental illness is much older, having its roots in the genealogies of race and racism as psychopathological categories from mid-19th century Europe and the United States up to today. From the early Zionists to Freud and then from Adorno through Fanon, racism became a mental illness. But what did this imply?

Sander Gilman ist seit 2005 Professor of the Liberal Arts and Sciences and Medicine an der Emory University in Atlanta. Zuvor lehrte er u.a. an der Cornell University, an der University of Chicago und der University of Illinois in Chicago, zudem war er von 2007 bis 2012 Professor am Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck College, sowie von 2010 bis 2013 Gastprofessor an der University of Hong Kong. Zu seinen neusten Publikationen zählt: Obesity. The Biography, 2010 und The Third Reich Sourcebook (hrsg. zus. mit Anson Rabinbach).

The event will be held in English