In this talk, Sara Honarmand Ebrahimi discusses her book titled Emotion, Mission, Architecture: Building Hospitals in Persia and British India, 1865-1914. The book argues that medical missions should be viewed as ‘emotional set-ups’ that served to change the sensory relationship between missionaries and local people. Here Ebrahimi discusses the architecture of the medical missions built by the London-based Church Missionary Society (CMS) in Persia and North-western British India. She shows how missionaries disregarded their scientific and sanitary ideals in favour of providing a space that could feel ‘familiar’. She then makes some speculations regarding the ‘affective lives’ of mission hospitals, discussing the Kerman and Yazd hospitals in particular.
About the speaker:
Sara Honarmand Ebrahimi is Humboldt Research Fellow at Art History Institute, Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main. Her research interests address the multifaceted origins of ideas and practices in the history of international health and architecture and consider the history of emotions as a way of doing architectural history.
