Calendar of Events

Dr. Jonathan Metzl will discuss the way in which cultural anxieties about race have shaped American notions of mental illness and continue to impact doctor-patient interactions in our seemingly postracial America.Dr. Metzl is primed to open new frontiers in research and teaching through innovation in our understanding of health, medicine and culture. Dr. Metzl is also the Frederick B. Rentschler II Professor of Sociology and Medicine, Health, and Society and Professor of Psychiatry at Vanderbilt University. His books include “The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease”, “Prozac on the Couch: Prescribing Gender in the Era of Wonder Drugs”, and “Against Health: How Health Became the New Morality.”Dr. Metzl received his medical degree along with B.A. degrees in both English Literature and Biology. During his medical residency at Stanford University, he went to night school and earned a master’s in poetry, then went to the University of Michigan where he earned a Ph.D. in American studies while also working as a psychiatrist. As he is quoted, “I was always the humanities kid in a medical family… I was always looking for a way to fuse it all together.”Lunch will be provided; reservations are required.