The Hermeneutic Circle: Curriculum, Interpretation, and the Cultural Politics of the Mentally Ill

• In Event: 68.061 - Roundtable Session 30
  In Roundtable Session: 68.061-5 - Constructing Knowledge in an Infinite Future: Terror, Trauma, Mental Illness, and Immortality

Abstract

Arising from a failed project attempting to write curriculum for a Midwestern Medical History Museum (MMHM), this paper explores the interplay between post-modern hermeneutic curricular endeavors, which aims to deconstruct the social narrative surrounding the MMHM. Due to circumstances outside of the authors’ control, the curriculum, originally rooted in an examination of the historical grounds and matters of mental health, became co-opted by “cultural politics” (Apple, 1993; 1995) and the struggle over the legitimization of what knowledge should be taught and justified as canon (Giroux, 2006). As a result, this paper serves to critically examine the history of the MMHM, the state hospital, and as a call for the complicated conversation (Pinar, 2012) of curriculum development.

Authors

• Alycia M. Elfreich, Indiana University - Indianapolis

• Erik James Shaver, Indiana University - IUPUI