2022 Distinguished Annual Lecture by Regina Kunzel

In Treatment: Psychiatry and the Archives of Modern Sexuality

This talk explores the encounter of sexual- and gender-variant people with psychiatry and psychoanalysis in the mid-20th-century U.S. and examines the role of psychiatric scrutiny and stigma in the making of modern sexuality. Focusing on the archive of St. Elizabeths Hospital, the federal hospital for the mentally ill in Washington, DC, Kunzel reflects on its meaning and challenges to queer history.

Flavin Family Auditorium | April 21, 2022 | 6-7:30pm | Free and Open to All | Free Parking Available

Regina Kunzel

Regina Kunzel is the Larned Professor of History and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Yale University. Kunzel’s research focuses on histories of gender and sexuality, carcerality, and on the twined histories of sexual deviance and normalcy. Kunzel’s publications include Criminal Intimacy: Prison and the Uneven History of Modern American Sexuality (University of Chicago Press, 2008), Fallen Women, Problem Girls: Unmarried Mothers and the Professionalization of Social Work, 1890 to 1945 (Yale University Press, 1993), and articles on queer history, transgender studies, disability studies, the history of prison sexual culture, single pregnancy, and gender and professionalization. Kunzel’s current project explores the encounter of LGBT/queer people with psychiatry in the twentieth-century United States.

Location and Access Information

Flavin Auditorium is located in Room 137 of the Isenberg School of Management on the campus of the University of Massachusetts Amherst (121 Presidents Drive, Amherst). Isenberg is located on Haigis Mall and is a short distance from the Robsham Visitors Center (300 Massachusetts Ave, $1.50/hour) and lot 34 (located on Massachusetts Ave directly west of the Visitors Center) which is free and open to the public after 5pm.

There are several bus stops nearby. More information: bus schedule, campus map with Flavin and nearby parking indicated.

Flavin Auditorium is wheelchair accessible. To request additional accommodations, email communications@history.umass.edu. More information: accessible parking, campus accessibility map.

The Distinguished Annual Lecture

The Department of History’s Distinguished Annual Lecture celebrates the 1996 establishment of the UMass/Five College Graduate Program in History. Combining the faculty and resources of the University of Massachusetts Amherst with those of four of the nation’s leading liberal arts colleges -- Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke and Smith Colleges -- this collaboration provides graduate students with an extraordinary depth of intellectual resources. Offered every academic year for more than 20 years, the program’s signature annual lecture has been delivered by some of the nation’s foremost historians.