March 12-13, 2004
Franke Institute for the Humanities
Regenstein Library, Room S102
The University of Chicago
1100 East 57th Street

The Weissbourd Annual Conference of the Society of Fellows


Depression: What is it Good For?

Accommodations

Conference Schedule

Directions

Participant Bios

The Weissbourd Fund

Depressed? Anxious? Confused?

Save the Date!

An interdisciplinary conference sponsored by the Weissbourd Fund for the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts at the University of Chicago and Feel Tank Chicago.

March 12-13, 2004
Franke Institute for the Humanities
Regenstein Library, Room S102
The University of Chicago
1100 East 57th Street

Co-Sponsored by the Arts Planning Council, Critical Inquiry, the Franke Institute for the Humanities, and the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago.

Is disempowerment the only prognosis for the depressed? Is the goal to "get happy?" This conference asks how we might use the experience of depression as the very index of our current political climate and as a key to future political thinking. We suspect that depression in its many forms has come to suffuse the daily lives and endeavors of a wide range of people, generating important social and political effects. In a time of economic downturns (no longer referred to as "depressions"), corporate and political scandals, rising fundamentalisms, capitalism’s "triumph," the expansion of the security state and increasing threats to civil liberties, can depression be used politically?

Topics include therapeutic effects of political protest, depression’s effect on the brain, the relationship between economic and psychological depression, the privatizing definitions and economic incentives of pharmaceutical advertising, and the specificities of depression, and responses to it, in Chicago.

Speakers include Lauren Berlant, Gregg Bordowitz, Ann Cvetkovich, Melissa Harris-Lacewell, Wendy Heller, Allan Horwitz, Jonathan M. Metzl, Jose Muñoz

Related Events:

"Counter/Depression," Art Exhibit

February 19-March 20 at the Center for Gender Studies, The University of Chicago, 5733 South University Avenue.

"Depression: What Is It Good For?" Video Program

Including short works by Ximena Cuevas, Ben Coonley, Miranda July, Paul Bush, Sterling Ruby, Janice Tanaka, Les Leveque, Julie Zando, and others. March 11. 8:00 p.m. Gene Siskel Film Center, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 164 N. State (at Randolph), 312-846-2600.

"Because we are men," Art Exhibit

Photographs by Carrie Yury. March 12-19. Franke Institute for the Humanities, Regenstein Library, Room S102, The University of Chicago, 1100 East 57th Street.

"Mercy," Public Reading

The first public reading of Sarah Schulman's new play, Mercy. A play about healing, psychiatry, and the history of the Jewish family. Saturday, March 13, 8:00 p.m., Third Floor of Ida Noyes Hall, The University of Chicago, 1212 East 59th Street. The playwright will be present to answer questions.

"Odyssey," Radio Talk Show

On Tuesday, March 8th at noon, listen to Melissa Harris-Lacewell and Jonathan Metzl on local radio talk show “Odyssey.”

 

Sponsored by

The Weissbourd Fund for the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts at the University of Chicago and Feel Tank Chicago.

Co-Sponsored by

The Arts Planning Council, Critical Inquiry, the Franke Institute for the Humanities, and the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago.