One week prior to "Class 1" chapter 2: "The Great Confinement" and chapter 3: "The Insane" of Madness and Civilization are handed out. They are to be read at home and students ought to be prepared to discuss them. Chapter 2 discusses the progression of the mental institution while chapter 3 looks closely at how insanity is articulated. We will spend "Class 1" discussing Foucault's representation of madness and how he explores the transition of madness from the Renaissance to the 19th century.
Students will come to "Class 2" having read and thought about Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself" specifically focusing on the notion of the asylum, mental patients, and madness and must be prepared to discuss the poem. Class discussion will focus on what madness is and how it is represented in Whitman's work. We will pay particular attention to actual 19th century asylums.
"Class 3" will follow up the discussions of each of the former class periods while exploring some of the various ways Whitman's contemporaries portray madness. Short excerpts and poems will be read in class each with the intention of building additional context for 19th century madness.
Writing Assignment (prompt handed out in "Class 3"):
What is madness and how was this explored by authors, poets, and writers in the 19th century? How has institutionalizing madness and the popularity of the insane asylum contributed to the artist, poet, author, philosopher's representation of it? Pick any two authors, artists, poets, or philosophers and compare and contrast their ideas of madness as they portray it in a single passage, painting, poem or otherwise with Walt Whitman's notion of madness and the asylum in "Song of Myself".
The assignment will be posted to your individual blogs and will be judged based on persuasive, thoughtful, and innovative connections between the materials you choose and those discussed in all three class periods. Please include the passage or the artistic representation of madness that you choose to analyze as well as a specific Whitman passage in your post. Please don't be concerned with the length of your blog because pictures of insanity can speak a thousand words and you are encouraged to use any form of artistic medium to display 19th century madness. Just be sure to make solid connections and analyze those connections clearly and concisely.
You did such interesting work digging up representations of the "asylum" in your earlier post . . .but here you jump straightaway to Foucault . . leaving the status of your earlier work in limbo. Rather than having Foucault tell students what madness was all about - - why not get the students to explore the meanings of madness circulating in the U.S.A. in 1855? I.e. it seems like you're using Foucault to discourage the students from undertaking exactly the kind of inquiry that underlays Foucault's work.
ReplyDeleteI guess I'm confused: in this version, there doesn't appear to be a cultural object, but only a cultural theorist; your earlier post seemed to point into the rich cultural contexts for madness in Whitman's time.
"What is the relationship between art and madness?" in Whitman seems to skip a bunch of steps in between - - including what is "madness" in Whitman and what did he draw on to employ this concept? Madness certainly seems related to marginality - - and so Whitman's "democratic" project. But, perhaps, there are also scenes in the poem where Whitman himself records or represents madness - -his senses overwhelming him, some intuition of the sublime or ecstatic which seems to escape his "tallying" and collecting powers.
I feel strongly about using Foucault as background reading for Whitman's poem. The chapters of Foucault's text on madness consider the historical aspect of madness that is more historical than theoretical. I think this framework will help the students situate the knowledge of 19th century madness as it is revealed in Whitman as well as the asylums that will be discussed that are mentioned in my earlier post. I never intended my earlier work to be left in limbo, the poem is situated in the very context of 19th century asylums and there is no avoiding that nor would I leave this behind like you suggest. The asylum is my cultural object which is a means to understand deeper issues of the poem and the cultural context in which it was written. If I failed to spell it out, it is because I didn't realize you wanted our "Assigning Whitman" assignment to include detailed lesson plans. I feel strongly about constructing the cultural context and foundation for students to understand madness as it relates to Whitman as well as other contemporaries (including artists, philosophers, poets, writers, et al) of his time. Over three class periods, I'd hope no steps would be skipped especially a question as important as "what is madness?"
ReplyDeletehi Jessica - a couple of questions/ideas....
ReplyDeletewhat intermediary steps/skills might students need to practice/master in order to successfully relate the background reading to the poem? how might you help them navigate that process before class #1 or in class that day? likewise, could you include some scaffolding activities to help them engage with the ideas & texts before tackling the full paper? maybe a blog post or quick write on one specific passage of the poem featuring madness? or creating some kind of OED-like wiki-tionary on keywords (madness, asylum, disease, mental illness, confinement etc.) in the various texts (featuring definitions in the students own words based on specific quotes in the texts)?