European History: 19th-century Europe, modern France, architectural and urban history, history of medicine, cultural historiography and methods
Sun-Young Park is a cultural and architectural historian who specializes in nineteenth-century France. Her research focuses on the ways in which architectural history, urban history, and the history of medicine intersect. Her first book, Ideals of the Body: Architecture, Urbanism, and Hygiene in Postrevolutionary Paris (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018), examines how a wide-ranging hygienic discourse shaped various institutions and public spaces of the early nineteenth-century capital, from military training grounds and schools to commercial pleasure gardens and community swimming pools. Professor Park is currently working on a second book project, The Architecture of Disability in Modern France, which will analyze how architectural and urban developments in France accommodated (and at times failed to accommodate) blind, deaf, and physically disabled subjects between 1750 and the early twentieth century. At Mason, she teaches courses on 19th-century Europe, French cultural history, history of medicine, and modern architectural and urban history.
Professor Park received a B.A. from Princeton University, an M.Arch. from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and a Ph.D. from Harvard University. Her work has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, Society of Architectural Historians, Mathy Junior Faculty Award in the Humanities (GMU), Whiting Foundation, Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Frederick Sheldon Traveling Fellowship, and Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.