Laurier's 17th annual Hunsberger Lecture will explore intersection of Blackness, madness and mental health
What’s wrong with Black folk? Trauma, Black psychiatrized madness, and the State’s response.
Friday November 20th, 2020
2:30 to 4:00 pm: Lecture
4:00 to 5:00 pm: Student Meet & Greet
5:00 to 6:00 pm: Faculty/Staff/Laurier Community Meet & Greet
Please click the link below to join the webinar:
https://wilfrid-laurier.zoom.us/j/96248129371?pwd=R0tNc2dlUXF5QktjM29vZzdtWUovQT09
Passcode: 918558
The purpose of this talk is to explore the intersections of Blackness, madness, and mental health as we witness the villainization and criminalization of Black psychiatrized people by the state, and in particular the criminal injustice system. Discourse about mental health, and private and public interactions and spaces will also be unpacked. Lastly, this talk will explore how the state functions to further anti-black racism and sanism, and how this results in death.
Her lecture, entitled ”What’s wrong with Black folk? Trauma, Black psychiatrized madness, and the State’s response,” will be presented by the Department of Psychology.
Idill Abdillahi is an Assistant Professor at the School of Disability Studies at Ryerson University. A critical interdisciplinary scholar and public intellectual, Idil Abdillahi has published on a wide array of topics, such as mental health, poverty, HIV/AIDS, organizational development, and several other key policy areas at the intersection of BlackLife and state interruption. Most notably, Abdillahi’s cutting-edge research and scholarship on anti-Black Sanism has informed the current debates on fatal police shooting of Black mad-identified peoples. In 2017, her theorizing helped inform the inquest of Andrew Loku, one among the litany of Black men killed by Police Services in the Greater Toronto Area. Abdillahi comes to this work with over 15 years of direct practice experience in the social service sector. She has been a frontline social worker, supervisor, clinical educator, and has also served in leadership and governance roles. Her theorizing on carceral care, and her years of work with people incarcerated across Canada, has informed her desire to challenge the sustainability of Canada’s carceral institutions.
Abdillahi is a founding member of the Black Legal Action Centre (BLAC) and currently serves as vice-chair of the board of directors. Abdillahi has been honoured with several awards and accolades for her work in mental health in Toronto. She won the prestigious Viola Desmond Award, celebrating the achievements of Black Canadian Women.
Abdillahi and Rinaldo Walcott co-published BlackLife: Post-BLM and the Struggle for Freedom in 2019 with ARP Books. She is currently working on her forthcoming book, “Blackened Madness: Medicalization, and Black Everyday Life in Canada.”
About the Hunsberger Lecture
This is the Department of Psychology's 17th annual Bruce Hunsberger Lecture. Professor Bruce Hunsberger was a faculty member in the Department of Psychology at Laurier from 1974 to 2003 and served as the department chair for many years. He was an influential scholar in the field of the psychology of religion and a recipient of the William James Award from the American Psychological Association. The ongoing Hunsberger Lecture series was created to remember his lifelong commitment to communicating psychological research to a wide audience.