Reflection Blog Posts
graduate and undergraduate students
Bathroom Practices
Public toilets https://www.history.com/news/toilet-paper-hygiene-ancient-rome-chinaBathroom Practices The way that people have used the bathroom has changed throughout time. Traces back to the earliest times when castles had drop towers to the modern toilet, we all know...
Early Stages of Bathroom Accessibility for Women
Line for Women's Bathroom (https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/573005/womens-bathroom-lines-dont-need-to-be-so-long)A long history follows bathroom inequality when it comes to serving men versus women. Up until the Victorian era, there was little to no signs of having bathrooms aside from...
Ancient Water & Sanitation Systems – Applicability for the Contemporary Urban Development
This journal provided an intriguing concept of implementing ancient water and sanitation systems into our contemporary waste systems to create more sustainable water systems. Currently, our waste and sanitation facilities, WATSAN, are holding a large impact on our global environmental crisis....
Water Imperial Laws in Japan
Public Goods, Private Claims, and Legal Convergence INTRODUCTIONYojimbo is a concept that describes the way private property and rare resources are not enforced by public authority. Japanese Imperial water laws go from a free-for-all grab of resources and water supply to an organized system with...
Modernity and Medieval Muck
modernity & Medieval Muck Photo clip from "Filthy Cities" Episode 1IntroJorgensen explores the realities of sanitation in London during the Medieval times. In her work, she responds to a television program called “Filthy Cities” and their episode about plumbing and sanitation in Medieval...
Clean Bathroom And Dirty Street
Have you ever taken an old-style train before? When I was a child, for some reason, my mom took me to Beijing every week by old-style train. And the bathroom on the train is one of the scariest “nightmares” in my childhood. It’s basically just a toilet with a hole directly leading to the track. I...
“Worms eat my…poop?”
Figure 1. Earthworms in compost The Wonder of Vermicomposting (fig. 1) By Jenna WheelerMany years ago, when I was a wide-eyed idealist, I embraced what my parents regarded as an alternative lifestyle. I was vegetarian, insisted on eating all organic foods, and was interested in all things...
Cholera in Naples, 19th Century
In Naples, Italy, Cholera first made its appearance on the harbor where people from all over the world would arrive. This bacteria could easily live in passengers guts, on their clothes, in their bed linens, etc. The first cases in Naples appeared in people who had consumed raw shellfish that most...
Avoidance in the You-Know-Where
Euphemisms: Mentioning the Unmentionable Euphemism is a linguistic tool that allows a speaker to refer indirectly to a culturally taboo, sensitive, or embarrassing subject. Using conventional euphemisms, speakers can make themselves understood while avoiding unpleasant feelings and maintaining...
Ladies and Disabled Toilets
Ladies and Disabled Toilets The sign says it all. A grouping together that is far from dignifying to people with disabilities and to women. In the Chapter ‘Pissing without Pity: Disability, Gender, and the Public Toilet, David Serlin argues that the gendering of public toilets by default causes...
Inspecting the past, ignoring the present
We are living in a time in America in which we pride ourselves on striving for equality. Women are fighting to be paid the same as men, a conversation about racial equality took center stage this part year, and non-heterosexual or fluid sexual orientations are widely accepted. However, it is...
Fountain’s Queer History
Fountain’s Queer HistoryMarcel Duchamp not only challenged the art world in 1917 with his “readymade” urinal entitled Fountain, he intended to confront society’s feelings about homosexuality. By signing the inverted urinal with a pseudonym R. Mutt and submitting it to the newly established Society...
Parasites & the Potty
PARASITES & THE POTTY YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW WHAT THEY WERE EXPOSED TO.Ancient toilets and their sanitation issues "[M]odern studies have shown that sharing latrinesmay actually be worse for the spread of disease than alack of latrines." - Marissa L. Ledger Figure 1 | Public Roman...
Toilet Bowl Reflections of Two Cultures
No two cultures may have as much in common regarding consumerism as America and Japan, but their similarities stop at the bathroom door. Both societies embrace a 21st century addiction to consumerism and keeping up to date with the latest technology and design in the global marketplace, except...
Rest Area Hobbyist
Are you wondering how I came up with this topic to research? It's a long story, but not as long as some of the drives that influenced this idea. My first cross country drive was when I moved to Oregon in the summer of 2018 to start my master's of interior architecture degree here at the University...