Description:

The Master of Arts in Medical Humanities & Bioethics Program

Presents

A Montgomery Lecture

With

Alice Weinreb, PhD
Associate Professor of History
Loyola University, Chicago

Against Our Will:
Protest and Resistance in Eating Disorder Discourse

This talk focuses on the ways in which eating disorders, especially anorexia nervosa, were constructed as sites of resistance during the 1970s and 1980s. I explore claims that anorexia nervosa was a variant of hunger strike and thus a form of political protest. I then examine medical writing about anorexic patients as uniquely ‘resistant’ to treatment, suggesting that the politicization of anorexia impacted not only popular understandings of the sickness but treatment modalities, with far-reaching implications for bioethical debates over forced feeding and coerced treatment for mental illnesses.

This lecture is open to the public and will be held in the Searle Seminar Room in the Lurie Research Building (303 E Superior), Chicago Campus. For those outside the Chicago area and anyone who would prefer to attend remotely, a Zoom option is also available.

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