Getting Beyond Ourselves: An Interview with Erica Hua Fletcher

So Many Wings

Join us for an intimate and far reaching conversation with scholar, educator, and media producer Erica Hua Fletcher where we discuss contemporary mental health social movements, community health and healing, identity politics, and the rise of Mad Studies.

Topics we cover include:

• The limits of terms like “madness” and “mental health”
• The many useful lessons learned from researching The Icarus Project and other forms of peer support
• The multiple and complex gifts and traps of embracing identity politics
• The growth of the Mad Studies field in the academy and beyond
• Critical psychiatry and how public mental health care can be radically transformed

About Erica:

Erica is a scholar, educator, and media producer based in Los Angeles, California (Tongva land). She currently serves as a co-president of the Anthropology and Mental Health Interest Group, in association with the American Anthropological Association's Society for Medical Anthropology; and this fall, she is starting a postdoctoral fellowship at UCLA, where she will be doing research on issues related to veterans recovery and resilience. Erica writes about contemporary mental health social movements, community health and healing, and carework; her scholarship and course offerings span the health humanities, social medicine, mad studies, and social work. She has taught at four public universities, most recently at the University of California at Irvine.

Find Erica online:

• On the web: https://ericahua.weebly.com/
• On Social Media: Instagram @erica.hua

Links to relevant resources:

• To download Erica’s articles: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Erica_Fletcher3
• For more on the return of class consciousness among the Left: See Adolph Reed Jr.’s article “The Myth of Class Reductionism:” https://newrepublic.com/article/154996/myth-class-reductionism
• Mikkel Krause Frantzen’s article “A Future with No Future: Depression, the Left, and the Politics of Mental Health: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/future-no-future-depression-left-politics-mental-health/
• Recent article and reflections on the Mad Studies movement: Peter Beresford (2020) ‘Mad’, Mad studies and advancing inclusive resistance, Disability & Society, 35:8, 1337-1342, DOI: 10.1080/09687599.2019.1692168
• To join Mad Studies Reading Groups (via Zoom), email Matthew Jackman at [e-mail] the (Australia-based) monthly reading group.
• Visit https://www.pinkskythinking.com/mad-studies to register for upcoming reading group discussions (based in the UK).
• To connect with social researchers with lived experience, visit User/Survivor Research Network at https://usersurvivorresearch.weebly.com/ and sign up for the mailing list.

Links to So Many Wings’ social media and website

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