A look at how severe mental illness was dealt with in early 20th century Beijing will be the focus of the next program in the ongoing Modern China Lecture Series at Cal State San Bernardino.

“Policing Madness in Early Twentieth-Century Beijing” will be presented by Emily Baum, an assistant professor of history at UC Irvine. The talk will take place at 2 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 3, in CSUSB’s John M. Pfau Library, room PL-4005. The lecture is free and open to the public; parking at the university is $6 per vehicle.

Baum’s research focuses on the history of psychiatry and mental illness in early 20th century China. Her current book project, “The Invention of Madness,” currently under review at the University of Chicago Press, examines the history of insanity during the early 1900s in Beijing.

Prior to the 20th century, severe mental illness, commonly also called madness, in China was typically managed within the home. The state was only expected to intervene when the mentally ill individual committed a serious crime.

In the first two decades of the century, however, the late Qing and early Republican governments began to adopt a more proactive stance toward the policing of madness.

Under pressure from foreign missionaries, Qing authorities erected a public asylum in Beijing in 1908, which was placed under the management of the municipal police. From this point forward, the municipality began to preemptively arrest and institutionalize the insane, regardless of whether they had broken the law.

Baum’s talk will examine the shift from reactive to proactive policing of madness, and will discuss why the Beijing police chose to institutionalize the individuals they did. In so doing, it will seek to shed light on the relationship between modern statecraft and shifting conceptions of madness in early 20th century China.

Baum earned her doctorate from UC San Diego, her master’s from Columbia University and her bachelor’s from Georgetown University. In addition, she holds a certificate from Johns Hopkins University-Nanjing Center Campus.

The Modern China Lecture Series was initiated to promote awareness of important issues related to China for those on the CSUSB campus and in the community. In the series of more than 30 lectures, workshops, film screenings, and roundtable forums since January 2014, China scholars from UC San Diego, UC Riverside, the Claremont Colleges, UCLA, USC, UC Irvine and other institutions have visited the CSUSB campus to share their expertise and opinions.

Speakers have included specialists in history, economics, political science, philosophy, finance, security studies, literature, anthropology and other fields.

The Modern China Lecture Series is sponsored by the CSUSB Intellectual Life Fund, the CSUSB Department of History, the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, and the CSUSB History Club/Phi Alpha Theta Chapter, the College of Extended Learning, the Jack H. Brown College of Business and Public Administration’s Center for Global Management, and the College of Arts and Letters, with support from Pamela Crosson, CSUSB Department of History coordinator, and Iwona Maria-Contreras of the university’s John M. Pfau Library.

For more information on the Nov. 3 event or the Modern China Lecture Series, contact Jeremy Murray, assistant professor of history, at (909) 537-5540 or jmurray@csusb.edu.