GSWS Reads: Holly Karibo

Institutionalizing Addiction: A Case Study of Drug Treatment Approaches in the American West during the 1920s

Holly M. Karibo is the 2020/2021 Farley Distinguished Visiting Fellow in the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at SFU. She is also an assistant professor of History at Oklahoma State University. In this talk, Karibo will discuss her current book manuscript, A New Home on the Range, which examines the history of drug treatment policies in the US West. Her work examines the relationship between treatment and incarceration as it emerged between the 1920s and 1960s, and how state and federal institutions attempted to blend these divergent, and often contradictory, mandates. This talk will focus on the impact that the first federal drug laws had on localized treatment approaches in the West, and how this laid the foundations for federal intervention into the issue of addiction treatment.

Read more about Karibo's research in our news feature: Before the war on drugs, the US built narcotic farms.