Mad Matters

“This book is a much needed addition to the field of Disability Studies.” —Nancy Hansen, University of Manitoba

“This reader fills a clear gap in Canadian scholarship. It will, in my view, put Mad Studies ‘on the map’ and open this important area of study to a much larger audience. It will be particularly useful for senior undergraduate and graduate students but also brings together a disparate body of literature that will be useful to specialists in the field and to those who teach Disabilities, Mad Studies, and Social History.” —Thomas E. Brown, Mount Royal University

“This book carves out the terrain of a vital and robust new field of study and makes clear its many points of connection to lived experiences of madness, activist movements, and related scholarly disciplines. The writing in Mad Matters comes from diverse personal and scholarly perspectives, and covers an impressive range of relevant topics, yet it all consistently advances the volume’s goal of explaining and demonstrating the scope and radical significance of Mad Studies. In short, the anthology is delightfully readable and theoretically rich.” —Joanne Woiak, University of Washington

Idil Abdillahi is an Associate Professor in the School of Disability Studies, cross-appointed to the School of Social Work at Toronto Metropolitan University. Broadly, her work focuses on Black life, livability, carcerality, and refusal. She is the author or co-author of several texts, including Black Women Under State: Surveillance, Poverty, & the Violence of Social Assistance (2022) and BlackLife: Post BLM and The Struggle for Freedom (2019).

Bren A. LeFrançois is a University Research Professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador. Their research focuses on Mad Studies, the psychiatrization of children, and critical children’s rights as well as the intersections of sanism, queerness, social activism, anarchist practices, and critical methodologies. Bren has taught courses in social work theory, critical mental health, child and youth practice, ethics, community development, and qualitative research.

Geoffrey Reaume is Associate Professor in the Critical Disability Studies graduate program at York University where he teaches Mad Peoples’ History and Disability History. He is a co-founder of the Psychiatric Survivor Archives of Toronto and created the first university credit course on Mad People’s History, which he has been teaching since 2000. He has published work on this topic for over thirty years.

Robert Menzies is Professor Emeritus, Sociology, at Simon Fraser University and was the initiator of the first edition of Mad Matters (2013).

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