“Well here I am, at last it happened, I got awfully scared about long range missiles and biological warfare and chemical warfare and it looked like the whole order was cracking at the seams and then I was an intellectual and a woman to boot, isolated and all that, so I tried the couch and he kept saying why can’t you come to terms with your basic feminine instincts so I kept trying on his couch and it wasn’t much fun and I thought about it and I was really awfully scared about the missiles . . . and who the hell can find the real repression in suburban houses no it is just that you CANNOT COME TO TERMS WITH YOUR BASIC FEMININE INSTINCTS but I don’t want an automatic washing machine electric dryer electric roaster . . . and if somebody doesn’t do something about it they are going to blow up too . . . and then suddenly I cracked or as they would say in the jargon around here I flipped and here I am.” 

–Anne Parsons, Diary of a Mental Patient (1963)

University of Lancaster, England. Symposium on “Gender, Technology, and Performativity.” Co-sponsored by the Institute for Women’s Studies and the Centre for Science Studies, June 12, 2005.

University of California, Berkeley. Sponsored by the Joint Program in Medical Anthropology, April 8, 2004.

University of Chicago, conference on Depression: What Is It Good For? Sponsored by the Society of Fellows/Critical Inquiry, March 12, 2004.

University of Maryland, College Park. Sponsored by the Sociology Department, February 9, 2004.

New York University. Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Gender & Sexuality, Sociology Department, and Performance Studies Department, March 11, 2003.