Insanity, identity and empire examines the formation of colonial social identities inside the institutions for the insane in Australia and New Zealand. Taking a large sample of patient records, it pays particular attention to gender, ethnicity and class as categories of analysis, reminding us of the varied journeys of immigrants to the colonies and of how and where they stopped, for different reasons, inside the social institutions of the period. It is about their stories of mobility, how these were told and produced inside institutions for the insane, and how, in the telling, colonial identities were asserted and formed. Having engaged with the structural imperatives of empire and with the varied imperial meanings of gender, sexuality and medicine, historians have considered the movements of travellers, migrants, military bodies and medical personnel, and ‘transnational lives’. This book examines an empire-wide discourse of ‘madness’ as part of this inquiry. -- .
| ISBN: | 9781526156310 |
| Publication date: | 29th June 2021 |
| Author: | Catharine Head of School Coleborne |
| Publisher: | Manchester University Press |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 240 pages |
| Series: | Studies in Imperialism |
| Genres: |
Colonialism and imperialism European history History of medicine |