Minds and Brains in America

Undergraduate credit

This course surveys the science and medicine of mind and brain in the United States. It reviews major developments in psychology, psychiatry, cognitive science, and neurology, along with efforts to apply these in non-scientific arenas. We begin early in the 1800s with asylums, phrenology, and other efforts to address madness. Later in the century, we see the rise of scientific professions against the backdrop of evolutionary theory. Entering the twentieth century, we track how new theories of mind affected public life. The final unit brings these topics and themes up to the present day. Our authors are both famous-including Darwin, Freud, Skinner, and Pinker-and lesser known. This course is meant to provide historical background for further work in mind and brain science. As an introductory humanities course, we also discuss the practice of writing and the mechanisms of historical argument. We read literary fiction in addition to scientific papers, further supplemented by frequent use of (mostly recent) films in lectures.