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Thesis ID: CBB729100959

Religion and Madness: Contests over Faith and Insanity in the American Cultural Imaginary, 1840-1920 (2020)

Prince, Alexandra (Author)
Rembis, Michael Allen (Advisor)

State University of New York at Buffalo
Rembis, Michael Allen
Publication date: 2020
Language: English

URI: http://search.proquest.com/docview/2423781187/46CDBE5C53A045EBPQ/61

Publication Date: 2020
Physical Details: 326

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This dissertation is a cultural history of the co-identification of religion and insanity over the long nineteenth century. It examines how the medical and popular label of insanity or “religious insanity” was deployed to impugn, subvert and slate for imprisonment and institutionalization diverse new American religious identities. Furthermore, it analyzes how the insanity label functioned to forward and undergird a constellation of gendered and racial presumptions. The project moves chronologically from considerations of early 19th century white evangelical revivalism, Second Adventism (Millerism) and Spiritualism to later nineteenth century examinations including post-Emancipation African American millenarian movements, Pentecostalism and Christian Science. Mad-labeled new religious individuals and groups actively contended with pathologized interpretations of their faith as a means of defending themselves from the cultural implications of madness. This work demonstrates how debates over religious insanity constituted a complex cultural reckoning regarding the diversity of expressions and interpretations within American religious life.

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