Disruptive Minds: Madness in the Early French Atlantic

FAIN: FT-286254-22

Ashley Meredith Williard
University of South Carolina (Columbia, SC 29208-0001)

Research and writing leading to a book exploring seventeenth and eighteenth century conceptions of madness in France and its Atlantic colonies.

My book project, Disruptive Minds: Madness in the Early French Atlantic, argues that madness exposes the workings of and transgressions against colonial power in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French Atlantic. Positioned at a rich intersection of critical disability, gender, and race studies, this research stands to make a significant contribution to understandings of imperialism and resistance in the francophone world and beyond. The five chapters explore competing worldviews and embodied experiences of madness for the diverse populations of the colonial Caribbean. Since mental disability often implied transgressions of expected behavior, my book represents a unique opportunity for interpreting the ways marginalized groups negotiated, suffered under, and struggled against colonialism and slavery.