The McGoogan Health Sciences Library is hosting a virtual lecture by Katherine Carroll, PhD, on Feb. 17 at noon. The presentation is titled “Constructing the Modern Physician: Architecture, Science, Race and Gender in Early Twentieth-Century Medical Centers.” Registration is required to receive the Zoom link.
In the decades just before and after 1900, medical schools and their teaching hospitals were rebuilt throughout the United States. Dr. Carroll argues that these new, large structures celebrated the shifts underway in medical science, physicians’ training and physicians’ professional identity. To this end, educators and architects worked hard to include the local community in the construction process and to create attractive and inviting structures.
At the same time, however, a close study of these facilities reveals the limits of educators’ and philanthropists’ visions. The school buildings encouraged hierarchies between physicians based on race and gender.
Dr. Carroll will incorporate examples from the history of the University of Nebraska Medical Center in her lecture.
Dr. Carroll is an architectural historian based in Albany, New York. Support for her research has come from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the Henry Luce Foundation/American Council of Learned Societies, the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine and the Rockefeller Archive Center.
Dr. Carroll recently published her first book, “Building Schools, Making Doctors: Architecture and the Modern American Physician” (University of Pittsburgh Press). She has presented widely on medical school design and taught most recently at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. She earned a bachelor of arts degree from Williams College and a doctorate in the history of art and architecture from Boston University.