BrainCultures Lab, co-director
Nima Bassiri's interest in the BrainCultures lab is organized around his research in the history and philosophy of the human sciences in general and the medicine of mind and brain throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in particular. He examines the historical intersections of brain medicine, law, and politics to see how those intersections transformed not only our definitions of normality and pathology but also our assumptions about proper conduct and economic freedom, particularly throughout the nineteenth century. He also looks at institutional preoccupations throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with so-called "dangerous individuals”—a broad category that has included everything from criminals and psychopaths to revolutionaries and political radicals—and how such individuals were defined by neuropathological medicine, and later re-defined by the political discourse of global security. He hopes to further pursue these lines of investigation with students and colleagues affiliated with the Lab.
