...In May 1873, George Ott admitted Anna to the Wisconsin State Hospital for the Insane. The prescriptive results of her stigmatized medical diagnosis included and went beyond institutionalization to include the legal processes of guardianship and divorce. The forceful combination of legal and medical...

...This chapter analyses the messy impact of historical forces such as ableism, patriarchy, and institutionalization on Ott’s life. The justifying logic imbedded in her diagnosis and prescriptive institutionalization (re)wrote her life story—her past, her future, and how she would be remembered...

... 1893 death. Her decades of institutionalization reveal daily life in a late nineteenth-century asylum and the permeability of its walls. Tracing the stories told of her after her death enables analyses of the impact of the diagnosis of mania and institutionalization on our memory of her. In addition...

...This chapter investigates the relationship between the Black queer body and medical diagnosis, elaborating how minorities negotiate the authority of state-empowered medical institutions. The central contention is that Black diasporic queer writers create narratives concerned with autonomy...