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CAPSTONE Architecture Stony Brook Hospital, Stony Brook, NY and Medicine: Matters of Life and Death
Professor Carla Yanni Art History Department, Rutgers
Co-taught with
Professor Bill Leslie Department of the History of Science and Technology Johns Hopkins University
Online Synchronous
Architecture and Medicine Welcome to Architecture and Medicine! We are eager to share our research with you. This is an interdisciplinary seminar in two senses – the students come from a variety of disciplines, the instructors come from two different disciplines as well. Yanni is an architectural historian, and Leslie is an historical of science and medicine. We hope to delve deeply into the history of medicine and the history of architecture. We hope to engage you in a range of issues related to space and healthcare. Surveying the period from 1750 to the present, we will study the architecture of building types such as hospitals, asylums, and dormitories. We will explore architects who worked closely with doctors, and we will consider issues of surveillance and gender. Aspects of contagion, quarantine, and the history of public health will also enter our discussions. The importance of therapeutic architecture today will be the last subject before the student presentations.
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Students may write research papers on any aspect of architecture (as related to medicine) from 1750 to the present.
This is a seminar, which means that you cannot disappear into the background. I expect you to complete the readings before class, participate in discussions, and ask for help when you need it.
Students may use this class to fulfill the Core Curriculum Discipline-Based Writing [WCD] requirement. You will receive more thorough instructions about the paper and presentation later in the semester; that is the assignment that I will use for WCD assessment.
There is no textbook. Some of the readings are hyperlinked to this syllabus, but most of the readings will be available through electronic course reserves on the Rutgers Library website. https://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/ There are also pdfs on the Sakai site.
Week 1. Overview & Discussion
For most of human history, medical doctors needed to see their patients up close and in person: does tele-medicine change all that? How does COVID-19 make you think about how humans occupy space? How has the practice of medicine changed since the pandemic. How does architecture lend legitimacy to medicine? Why do hospitals look the way they do?
Week 2. The Place of Knowledge; Hospitals and Hospices in the Early Modern Period
Eleanor Klibanoff, “A History of Quarantine from the Bubonic Plague to Typhoid Mary,” National Public Radio, January (2020)https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/01/26/799324436/a-history-of- quarantines-from-bubonic-plague-to-typhoid-mary
Adi Ophir and Steven Shapin, “The Place of Knowledge: A Methodological Survey,” Science in Context (1991) 4: 3-22
Allan M. Brandt and David C. Sloane, “’Of Beds and Benches: Building the Modern American Hospital,” in Galison and Thompson, Architecture of Science (1999): 281-302
Session 3: Anatomical Theaters and Operating Rooms
Annmarie Adams, “Surgery and Architecture: Spaces for Operating,” in Thomas Schlich, ed., Palgrave Handbook of the History of Surgery (2018): 261-81
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Elizabeth Johns, “The Gross Clinic, or Portrait of Professor Gross” in Thomas Eakins, Painter of Modern Life (1984): 46-81
Stuart W. Leslie, “Architectural Prescriptions: Johns Hopkins Medicine and the Shift from the Pre-Modern to the Modern Hospital,” in Health and Architecture: Designing Spaces for Healing and Caring in the Pre-Modern Era (Forthcoming 2021) See sep file for images on Sakai
Visit from Prof. Susan Sidlauskas, expert on 19th-century painting and medicine
Session 4. Pandemic planning, Nurses’ housing, and Children’s hospitals
John B. Osborne, “Preparing for the Pandemic: City Boards of Health and the Arrival of Cholera in Montreal, New York, and Philadelphia in 1832,” Urban History Review / Revue d'histoire urbaine Vol. 36, No. 2 (Spring 2008): 29-42
David Sloane, "Not Designed Merely to Heal": Women Reformers and the Emergence of Children's Hospitals,” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, Vol. 4, No. 4 (October 2005): 331-354
Annmarie Adams, “A Room of their Own: Nurses’ Residences in Montreal,” Material History Review Vol. 40 (1994)
Session 5: Asylums and Psychiatric Hospitals
Carla Yanni, Architecture of Madness, Introduction and Chapter 3 (about the cottage plan) [Yanni_Arch of Madness.pdf]
Oliver Sacks, “The Lost Virtues of the Asylum,” New York Review of Books, September 24, 2009 http://www.psychodyssey.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/The-Lost-Virtues- of-the-Asylum.pdf
Listen to this Podcast: 99 Percent Invisible “The Kirkbride Plan” https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-kirkbride-plan/
During Class Time we will watch a short film about the Demolition of Greystone Psychiatric Hospital in New Jersey, “GREYSTONE RISING by JODY JOHNSON aka GLIDEBYJJ” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPWjo_6kf9Y
Session 6: Comparative Building Types: Prisons, Dormitories
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Submit your proposed paper topic this day. One or two sentences explaining the topic and its relationship to the themes of the class will suffice; this can be an email or a word doc in your Dropbox on Sakai. The proposed paper topic is not graded.
Before class, look at this: https://www.myleszhang.org/2019/11/11/jeremy-bentham-panopticon-animation/
Anna Andrzejewski, Building Power Architecture and the Ideology of Surveillance in Victorian America (2008), on prisons, pp. 14-35
Carla Yanni, “The Coed’s Predicament: The Martha Cook Building and the Housing of Women at the University of Michigan,” Buildings and Landscapes (2017)
Listen to this podcast from the Ted Radio Hour “The Power of Spaces” https://www.npr.org/2020/07/23/894580784/the-power-of-spaces
Session 7: The Twentieth-Century Hospital Bibliography (at least 5 sources) and 40-word abstract due to Professor Yanni by 9PM on ***(Neither the biblio nor the abstract will be graded.)
Newspaper project explained
Annmarie Adams, “Modernism and Medicine: The Hospitals of Stevens and Lee1916- 1932,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 58, no. 1 (March 1999): 42- 61
Matt Hickman, “The Transformation of Chicago’s Historic Cook County Hospital” https://www.archpaper.com/2020/08/transformation-of-chicagos-historic-cook-county- hospital-into-mixed-use-hotel-complex-complete/
Session 8. Newspaper project due: Student presentations this Class (no readings for this day) Lottery to determine dates of final presentations later in the semester
Session 9: Medical Schools and Soundscapes
Katherine L. Carroll, “Creating the Modern Physician: The Architecture of American Medical Schools in the Era of Medical Education Reform,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 75, no. 1 (March 2016): 48-73.
Visit from Katherine Carroll, Visiting Assistant Professor, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts
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David Theodore “Sound medicine: studying the acoustic environment of the modern hospital, 1870–1970,” The Journal of Architecture (2018)
Listen to this Podcast: “Sound and Health: Hospitals” https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/sound-and-health-hospitals/
Four pages (double-spaced) of your paper are due at midnight on Wed November 4.
Please submit an electronic copy of four pages in Word to your dropbox on Sakai. These pages may be any part of your paper, not necessarily the first four pages. Illustrations required. This assignment will be graded.
Session 10: Therapeutic Architecture Today
“The Question of Living Spaces,” Carla Yanni and Holly Taylor, Inside Higher Ed, June 12, 2020 https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2020/06/12/architecture-expert-and-bioethicist- explore-problem-residence-halls-during-pandemic
Visit from Holly Taylor, Bioethicist, National Institutes of Health
“Designing to Survive,” The Washington Post Magazine, July 14, 2020 https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2020/07/13/pandemic-has-shown-us-what- future-architecture-could-be/?arc404=true
Vanessa Chang, “The Post-Pandemic Style: After deadly outbreaks, architects transform the places we live and work, Slate.com April 19, 2020 https://slate.com/business/2020/04/coronavirus-architecture-1918-flu- cholera-modernism.html
Additional Short Readings to be selected by students based on topics that emerge during the class
Session 11: Instructions: how to prepare for your 10-minute spoken online presentation with slides
TEST Due Friday **** 10PM (Format to be determined, but probably open book w/ essays based on class notes)
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Session 12 Student presentations (5 students)
Session 13 Student presentations (5 students)
Session 14 Student presentations (6 students)
Your 12-page paper (double-spaced, approx. 3,000 words) is due **** Upload to your Dropbox in Sakai as a word doc. Images may be in separate pdf.
COURSE EVALUATION Newspaper project 10% Class Participation 20% Four double-spaced pages of your paper 10% Take home Test 20% Final Paper and Presentation 40% (Paper and Presentation are graded together as one unit totally 40% of your grade. Your Final Paper will be used as the assessment document for the Core Goal WCD.)
Why I take attendance, even though we are all grown-ups here: As an educator, I place a high value on coming to class well-prepared and deeply motivated, and I expect the same from my students. (This means you!) I believe that in a successful college class, the professor and the students create a community of engaged scholars who explore an intellectual subject together. There are in-class assignments and projects that will require your attention. If you want to do well in this class, you will need to keep up with the readings, attend class, participate in a meaningful way, and take responsibility for your own education. Therefore, students are expected to attend all classes. If you expect to miss class, please use the University absence reporting website https://sims.rutgers.edu/ssra/ to indicate the date and reason for your absence.
Attendance Policy: After two unexcused absences, each additional absence will cause ½ grade to be taken off your final grade. (For example, a B+ becomes a B.)
Grading scale A = 90 and up; B+ = 89 to 86; B = 85 to 80; C+ = 79 to 76; C = 75 to 70; D =70 to 60; F = 60 and below
Goals for WCD Writing in the Discipline // SAS Core Communicate effectively in modes appropriate to a discipline or area of inquiry; evaluate and critically assess sources and use the conventions of attribution and citation correctly; and analyze and synthesize information and ideas from multiple sources to generate new insights
Assessment Rubric for WCD for Yanni’s Art History RUTGERS
Yes. The student achieved Somewhat. The student No. The student did not a high degree of needs work in this area. demonstrate competence competence in this area. in this area.
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Critical thinking Did the student demonstrate critical thinking?
Research Did the student use appropriate sources? Did the student engage the appropriate technologies for conducting research, and practice proper methods of citation? Argument Did the student construct an historical argument Visual analysis Did the student demonstrate skill in visual analysis especially as related to architecture and space Writing Did the student demonstrate the ability to write with clarity and rigor?
Additional Bibliography
Carla Keyvanian, Hospitals in Rome, 1250 -1400
Marcus and Sachs, Therapeutic Landscapes: An Evidence-Based Approach to Designing Healing Spaces
Nicolas Pevsner, A History of Building Types, chapter on Hospitals
Jane L. Stevens Crawshaw, Plague Hospitals: Public Health for the City in Early Modern Venice (History of Medicine in Context)
Londa Schiebinger, “Skeletons in the Closet: The First Illustrations of the Female Skeleton in Eighteenth-Century Anatomy,” Representations, No. 14, (Spring, 1986), pp. 42-82
Sarah Schrank and Didem Ekici, eds., Healing Spaces, Modern Architecture, and the Body (New York: Routledge, 2017), 186-202.
David Theodore, "The Decline of the Hospital as a Healing Machine," in Sarah Schrank and Didem Ekici, eds., Healing Spaces, Modern Architecture, and the Body (New York: Routledge, 2017), 186-202.
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John D. Thompson and Grace Goldin, The Hospital: A Social and Architectural History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975),
Helen Sweet and Sue Hawkins, Colonial caring: A history of colonial and post-colonial nursing, excerpt
For images, consult:
The Wellcome Collection (based in London) https://wellcomecollection.org/works
The National Library of Medicine https://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/collections/photos.html