Mad with Freedom

“A work of stunning originality, smart, deeply researched in both primary and secondary sources, and well written and accessible to readers inside and outside the academy.” ~Randy J. Sparks, author of Africans in the Old South: Mapping Exceptional Lives across the Atlantic World

“Mad with Freedom is a pathbreaking work that speaks to readers today about the significant intersectionality of race and medicine.” ~Catherine Clinton, author of Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“This well-crafted study demonstrates that the politics of psychiatry cannot be disentangled from the history of Black freedom struggles.” ~Rana A. Hogarth, author of Medicalizing Blackness: Making Racial Difference in the Atlantic World, 1780–1840

“Edwards-Grossi smartly crosses disciplinary boundaries in her examination of anti-Blacknesses pervasiveness in psychiatry. This brilliant book should be read by those persons interested in understanding the political legacies of medical racism.” ~Deirdre Cooper Owens, author of Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology

“In examining diverse institutions, physicians, and racial theorists across the South, Mad with Freedom provides a temporal and geographic breadth that separates it from previous books on constructions of Black people’s mental health. In short, Edwards-Grossi has written a historiographic touchstone for the study of racism and psychiatry in the United States.” ~Christopher D. E. Willoughby, coeditor of Medicine and Healing in the Age of Slavery

“Edwards-Grossi expands the historiography on anti-Black racism in the US by analyzing the intersection of white supremacy and the evolving field of psychiatry in erecting a supposed biological basis for deviant Black behavior that served to justify slavery and then Jim Crow practices between 1840 and 1940.” ~CHOICE

“Élodie Edwards-Grossi has written an important book on race and psychiatry in the American South. While a number of books over the past several years have begun a much-needed reexamination of the history of psychiatry through the lens of race, Edwards-Grossi has moved the field forward in significant ways. . . . Mad with Freedom is extensively researched, well argued, and lucidly written. It is an excellent addition to the growing body of scholarship on race, mental illness, and psychiatry in United States history.” ~Journal of Southern History