This course will explore visual and material cultures of madness as constructed and critiqued in the modern period. We will investigate how visual culture has been used to construct and represent madness, mediumship, hysteria, and mental illness and how visual and material cultures, including architecture and craft, have functioned in relation to therapy, diagnosis, as well as the practice and historical justifications of psychiatry. We will also explore how “asylum art” came to play a critical role in the twentieth century, both in relation to anti-psychiatry and as a tool for the avant-garde.