Topics – Toilet training and internalizing social norms

Potential Topics

• Relationship between the cleanliness/hygiene revolution and racism – how that relationship influenced bathroom design in the US in the 19th and 20th centuries.
• Industrialization and its culture of waste and excess – how that influenced the sanitation system we chose and popularized.
• Class/caste and bathrooms in societies with differing social structures (Ancient Rome, Imperial India, modern US). How did bathrooms express or reinforce class/caste divisions?
• Gender and the bathroom as a social space (“potty parity,” gender norms/stereotypes)
• Toilet training and socialization in modern Western culture. Investigation of the implicit cues children absorb from bathroom design and etiquette that teach them how to behave in bathrooms and society at large.