October 22, 2021
The October 22, 2021 Friday Morning Seminar featured Professor Christopher Dole ina session titled “Psychiatry, Disaster, Security: Turkey’s Mediterranean Assemblages.” Professor Fatih Artvinli will also be joining us from Istanbul to serve as a discussant.
This talk explores the development of a transnational psychiatric collaboration between psychiatrists and psychologists in Turkey and Israel in the wake of a massive earthquake that struck Western Turkey in 1999. Based on extended ethnographic fieldwork in sites across the earthquake region, the talk traces the emergence of a specific set of interventions in order to, first, highlight the striking adaptability and mobility of their forms of psychiatric expertise and, second, to argue that following their movement offers a means for understanding novel arrangements of psychiatry, disaster, and security forming in the region over the past two decades.
Christopher Dole, PhD is Professor of Anthropology at Amherst College. His research and writing explores the intersection of suffering, healing, and politics. His publications include Healing Secular Life: Loss and Devotion in Modern Turkey (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012) and The Time of Catastrophe (co-editor, Routledge, 2015). He is currently working on a project concerned with humanitarian psychiatry and the affective remains of catastrophe in Turkey.
Fatih Artvinli, PhD is an associate professor of history of medicine and ethics at Acibadem University in Istanbul. He graduated from Yusufeli Health Vocational High School (Department of Public Health) and received a B.A in political science and international relations from Marmara University (2001), M.A in political science (2004) and Ph.D. in modern Turkish history (2011) are from Yıldız Techical University. He received a Fogarty Fellowship from National Institute of Health and worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard Medical School and the Boston Children’s Hospital (2015-2016). From 2001 to 2012 Fatih Artvinli, worked as a nurse and health officer at several medical institutions including Gebze-Tavşanlı Health Center, Beykoz Public Hospital, Zeynep Kamil Women and Children Hospital and during Ph.D dissertation he worked at Bakırköy Hospital for Psychiatry, Neurology and Neurosurgery. His research interests lie at the intersection of the history of psychiatry, bioethics and politics. Besides a number of journal articles appeared in History of Psychiatry and History of Neurosciences he is the author of two books in Turkish: Osman Bölükbaşı: A Life Spent for a Mirage (Kitap Yayınevi, 2007), Madness, Politics and Society: Toptaşı Mental Asylum (1873-1927) (Boğaziçi University Press, 2013).
For videos of previous seminars, please contact Sadeq Rahimi.