{"product_id":"depression-9780822352389","title":"Depression","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnn Cvetkovich combines memoir and cultural critique in search of ways of writing about depression as a public cultural and political phenomenon rather than as a personal medical pathology.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A provocative addition to Ann Cvetkovich's eloquent writings on the archives of public feelings, this book takes depression out of the space of the private into the complex politics of our time. Weaving together memoir, cultural and medical history, and literary and theoretical discussion, Cvetkovich experiments with and reflects on unconventional ways of writing about embodiment, cognition, and affect. Along the way, she offers myriad prescriptions, small and large, on how to cope with the daily effects of depression and how to heal the world.\"—\u003cb\u003eMarianne Hirsch\u003c\/b\u003e, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture after the Holocaust\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Combining cultural critique with nuanced readings of queer aesthetic practices, and mixing theoretical reflections on experience with experiments in memoir, \u003ci\u003eDepression: A Public Feeling\u003c\/i\u003e delivers not only critical insights but also wisdom. The book offers a model for something like collective or collaborative authorship; framed as a project conceived in concert with a far-flung community of academics, activists, and artists, \u003ci\u003eDepression\u003c\/i\u003e is a departure from academic business as usual. This is a profoundly inspiring book.\"—\u003cb\u003eHeather Love\u003c\/b\u003e, author of \u003ci\u003eFeeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Aesthetics, anecdotes and evidence against the medical model.” -- Tyler Cowen * New York Times Magazine *\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eDepression: A Public Feeling\u003c\/i\u003e… sets out to challenge ‘contemporary medical notions’ of depression ‘that simultaneously relieve one of responsibility (it’s just genes or chemicals) and provide agency (you can fix it by taking a pill)’. . . . In anatomising her ‘lived experience’ of writer’s block, Cvetkovich invites the reader to ask whether, despite the trade-specific terminology, this is still a symptom exclusive to writers. . . . [H]er perceptions are agile.” -- Talitha Stevenson * New Statesman *\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eDepression\u003c\/i\u003e succeeds at opening up a public discussion on certain kinds of depression that are often dismissed as trivial, like the stress of academic labour. . . . [C]lear and helpful with a vision for overcoming melancholy through a transformation of everyday life.” -- William Burton * Lambda Literary Review *\u003cbr\u003e“[Cvetkovich] has taken some huge risks with \u003ci\u003eDepression\u003c\/i\u003e. Rather than building a traditional academic argument with research and theory, the book combines stylistically distinct and potentially disparate parts that add up to a highly readable, relatable, radical treatise that provides many points of entry and fresh thinking on one of the most overexamined subjects of the past few decades.” -- Cindy Widner * Austin Chronicle *\u003cbr\u003e“At one end, \u003ci\u003eDepression\u003c\/i\u003e is a call to expand how we frame and engage with depression, and at the other it’s an internal appeal to academia to accept personal experience as a valid source material for scholarship. By melding the personal and the academic, Cvetkovich is creating an important new forum for how we discuss depression. . . . The material is totally fascinating. . . .” -- Nina Lary * Bitch *\u003cbr\u003e“Cvetkovich offers us an introduction to thinking critically about depression's causes and its manifestations as well as, perhaps, the localised tactics that are necessary to enable recovery. At the end, she turns rather sweetly to crafting as one reparative habit, partly because of the aesthetic of connectivity that it can stimulate. Knitting yourself out of depression: it's kind of folksy, but I liked it.” -- Sally Munt * Times Higher Education *\u003cbr\u003e“The book’s merit is in jolting us out of our habit of thinking about depression as a personal, medical issue, reminding us of the ways in which the rules and roles of society influence our psyches and feelings about ourselves. By taking depression out of the exclusive domain of the therapeutic culture, [Cvetkovich] challenges us to make new connections between the individual’s experience of depression and life within a depressive culture.” -- Irene Javors * Gay \u0026amp; Lesbian Review *\u003cbr\u003e“[A]n experiment in connecting personal feelings with social conditions and critical analysis. . . . Cvetkovich finds a variety of ways to utilize the tools of academe to build a shelter from the traumas of academe.  It's both funny and oddly endearing to see an academic response to depression that turns it into a field, organizes conferences and protests with special and entertaining dress requirements, recommends cures for writing blocks, and appropriates American anxiety in the interest of getting academic work published.”  -- Elaine Showalter * Chronicle Review *\u003cbr\u003e“Although she is not the first to consider that institutionalized racism causes depression, Cvetkovich’s take on academia’s ills is unique. . . . Still, \u003ci\u003eDepression\u003c\/i\u003e is not a pity party. Cvetkovich offers hope to all who fight depression by suggesting that as she has emerged from despair, so can others.” -- Rachel Pepper * Curve *\u003cbr\u003e“Cvetkovich draws us into her own encounters with various obstacles and leaves us with the sense that all the insights she has gained have been unexpected gifts—earned through lots of hard work, but still contingent, provisional, uncertain. If you have ever been a struggling academic, you will relate, and you will feel grateful.” -- Aaron Sachs * American Quarterly *\u003cbr\u003e\"It is important that Cvetkovich is able to balance the personal desire for feeling better alongside a questioning of the investment that exists in both medical and critical social models of depression. Importantly, while this approach never undermines the experience of depression by positioning it only as a construction, it still draws attention to commonplace assumptions about feeling sad, being political and getting better. Cvetkovich weaves her own journal through the critical reading that makes her work so compelling—simultaneously taking seriously, and asking us to question, the more familiar narrative she has just shared.\" -- Jacqueline Gibbs * Feminist Review *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgments ix\u003cbr\u003e Introduction 1\u003cbr\u003e Part I. The Depression Journals \u003ci\u003e(A Memoir)\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Going Down 29\u003cbr\u003e Swimming 43\u003cbr\u003e The Return 62\u003cbr\u003e Reflections: Memoir as Public Feelings Research Method 74\u003cbr\u003e Part II. A Public Feelings Project \u003ci\u003e(A Speculative Essay)\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e 1. Writing Depression: Acedia, History, and Medical Models 85\u003cbr\u003e 2. From Dispossession to Radical Self-Possession: Racism and Depression 115\u003cbr\u003e 3. The Utopia of Ordinary Habit: Crafting, Creativity, and Spiritual Practice 154\u003cbr\u003e Epilogue 203\u003cbr\u003e Notes 213\u003cbr\u003e Bibliography 243\u003cbr\u003e Illustration Credits 265\u003cbr\u003e Index 267","brand":"Duke University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49406070554967,"sku":"9780822352389","price":19.79,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780822352389.jpg?v=1730494425","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/depression-9780822352389","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}