Coming Up: A Mini-Series on Religion and Mental Health as part of the Year of Emotional Well-Being.
The Healthcare and Religion Lecture series is a monthly zoom lecture on a range of topics related to intersections of religion, the health sciences, and healthcare systems. This series, now in its third years, draws faculty, students, chaplains, and healthcare professionals from Pitt and beyond.
Religious Studies is a sponsor of the series along with the Center for Bioethics & Health Law, the, Jewish Studies Program, the Palliative and Supportive Institute of UPMC, and the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary Continuing Education Program
This fall, the Provost’s Year of Emotional Well-Being will be a co-sponsor of a mini-series on religion and mental health. The next three lectures are part of this mini-series or series-within-the-series. Some of the speakers will also be participating in academic activities and classes as part of their virtual “visits” to Pitt.
Religious Studies faculty will be introducing two of the talks and the sessions are moderated by Krissy Moehling, PhD, researcher in the Department of Family Medicine, and Lisa Parker, PhD, Director of the Center for Bioethics and Healthcare Law.
Click here for all upcoming lectures this academic year.
Tuesday October 4, 8-9 am
From Monasteries to Hospitals: An Institutional History of Care for the Insane in East Asia
James Robson, PhD
James C. Kralik and Yunli Lou Professor
of East Asian Languages and Civilizations
Harvard University
Introduced by Cuilian Liu, PhD, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies
Abstract: There has been much recent attention paid to the relationship between Buddhism and medicine, especially in regard to numerous studies of the application of mindfulness as an efficacious therapy for everything from depression to schizophrenia. Despite the many comprehensive surveys of Buddhist medical literature across Asia, there remains a paucity of studies on the history of the institutional connections between Buddhist monasteries and the care for the “insane” from the premodern period to the present. This talk aims to introduce the long hidden history of the role monasteries played in this care up through the birth of modern mental institutions in East Asia.
Tuesday November 1, 8-9 am
The Influence of Early Muslim Physicians and Classical Islamic Scholars on the Development of Modern Psychiatry
Rania Awaad, MD
Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry
Stanford University
Introduced by Jason Rosenstock, MD, professor Psychiatry at Pitt
Abstract: The first psychiatric hospitals in the world were established as early as the 8th century during the Islamic Renaissance. Despite the emergence of a highly sophisticated and interdisciplinary system of understanding the human psyche in early Islamic history, most students of modern psychology are unfamiliar with this rich history. This lecture will provide an historical and contemporary review of the Islamic intellectual heritage as it pertains to modern behavioral science and how mental illness was historically perceived and treated in the Muslim world. (Continuing medical education credit will be available.)
Tuesday December 6, 8-9 am
Spiritual Madness: Race, Psychiatry, and African American Religions
Judith Weisenfeld, PhD
Agate Brown and George L. Collord Professor of Religion
Princeton University
Introduced by Paula Kane, PhD, Professor of Religious Studies and Marous Chair of Catholic Studies.
Abstract: This talk will explore late nineteenth and early twentieth-century psychiatric theories about race, religion, and the “normal mind.” It will demonstrate how white asylum doctors drew on works from popular and scientific racial discourse as well as History of Religions scholarship to make racialized claims about African Americans’ “traits of character, habit, and behavior.” This history of the intersections of psychiatry and African American religions sheds light on how ideas about race, religion, and mental normalcy shaped African American experience in courts and mental hospitals and the role of racialization of religion played more broadly in the history of medicine, legal history, and the history of disability.