Epidemic of the Mind

This dissertation examines the ways in which the science of insanity informs the creation of the American citizen during the years of the early Republic. By utilizing the medical texts of "America's first psychiatrist" Benjamin Rush, as a way of interpreting early American literature, I discern that the uses of insanity factor into some of the key discourses about the creation and function of citizenship in the decades just proceeding the American Revolution. Recent scholarly trends in early American literature have started to understand how disease, especially small-pox and yellow fever, uncover the strategies at work in transforming individuals into national citizens. In the late-eighteenth century, insanity is conceived as a disease capable of spreading throughout a geographic space. By examining the public's reaction to this "epidemic of the mind," I reveal that the appearance of insanity in texts by Crèvecoeur, William Hill Brown, Charles Brockden Brown, and Leonora Sansay gesture towards the precarious position of former loyalists, women, and slaves during the late eighteenth century. In each chapter I argue that the language of madness and the discourse on citizenship mirror each other, with both offering a bleak assessment of post-Revolution America.