Spaces of Inquiry

The Laboratory, the Clinic, the Factory and the Museum

Stuart W. Leslie (Johns Hopkins University)

Introduction (January 13, Thursday, 14:40-16:10; Bldg 14, Room 308)

Taking seriously Michel de Certeaus distinction between place and spacethat space
is a practiced place shaped and transformed by those who use itthis short course
will explore how focusing on particular spaces of science, technology and medicine can
provide us with instructive new perspectives on our discipline. We will be asking how
different spaces of inquiry reflected and reinforced distinctive ways of practicing
science. How well does Winston Churchills political adageWe shape our buildings
and afterwards our buildings shape usapply to the world of modern science?
Readings:
David Livingstone, Putting Science in Its Place: Geographies of Scientific Knowledge
(Chicago, 2003): chapter 1-3.
Stuart W. Leslie, Regional Disadvantage: Replicating Silicon Valley in New Yorks
Capital Region, Technology and Culture 42:2 (April 2001): 236-264.

The Laboratory (January 17, Monday, 16:20-17:50; Bldg 14, Room 308)
Lecture: Spaces for the Space Age: William Pereiras Aerospace Modernism
Readings:
Stuart W. Leslie, A Different Kind of Beauty: Scientific and Architectural Style in
I.M. Peis Mesa Laboratory and Louis Kahns Salk Institute, Historical Studies in the
Natural Sciences, v. 38, n. 2 (2008): 173-221.
Maria Rentetzi, Designing (For) a New Scientific Discipline: The Location and
Architecture of the Institut fur Radiumforschung in Early Twentieth-Century Vienna,
British Journal for the History of Science, 38, 3 (2005): 275-306.
Peter Galison and Caroline Jones, Factory, Laboratory, Studio: Dispersing sites of
Production in P. Galison and E. Thompson, eds. The Architecture of Science
(Cambridge, 1999): 497-537.

The Clinic (January 19, Wednesday, 16:20-17:50; Bldg 14, Room 308)
Lecture: Bertrand Goldbergs Architecture of Healing
Readings:

Thomas Schlich Surgery Science and Modernity: Operating Rooms and Laboratories
as Spaces of Control, History of Science, 45 (2007):231-256.
Susan L. Burns, Contemplating Places: The Hospital as Modern Experience in Meiji
Japan in Helen Hardacre (ed.) New Directions in the Study of Meiji Japan (New York,
1997): 702-718.
Gert Brieger, A Portrait of Surgery: Surgery in America, 1875-1889, Surgical Clinics
of North America 67 (1987): 1181-1216.

The Factory (January 21, Friday, 14:40-16:10; Bldg 14, Room 308)
Lecture: Albert Kahns Fordist Architecture
Readings:
Robert Fox and A. Guagnini, Laboratories, Workshops and Sites (Berkeley CA, 1999):
41-85.
Christophe Lecuyer, Making Silicon Valley: Innovation and the Growth of High Tech,
1930-1970 (Cambridge, 2006): 129-167.
Stuart W. Leslie, Blue Collar Science: Bringing the Transistor to Life I the Lehigh
Valley, Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences (2001): 71-113.

The Museum (January 24, Monday, 16:20-17:50; Bldg 14, Room 308)
Lecture: Commemorating the Atomic and the Space Age
Readings:
Bruce Robertson, The South Kensington Museum in Context: an Alternative History,
Museums and Society 2 (March, 2004):1-14.
Kentaro Tomio, Visions of Modern Space: Expositions and Museums in Meiji Japan
in Hardacre (ed.) New Directions in the Study of Meiji Japan (New York, 1997): 719733.
Morris Low, Promoting Scientific and Technological Change in Tokyo, 1870-1930:
Museums, Industrial Exhibitions and the City in Mirian Levin et. al. Urban Modernity:
Cultural Innovation in the Second Industrial Revolution (Cambridge, 2010): 205-253.

Public Lecture (January 26, Wednesday, 16:20-17:50; TBA)

The Architects of Modern Science