This free course, Lennox Castle Hospital, looks at the history of institutions in the twentieth century, starting with a case study of Lennox Castle Hospital. It tries to make sense of the history of Lennox Castle, and of institutional life in general, through testimony of those who experienced institutions as inmates and as nurses, as well as through Erving Goffman's model of the 'total institution'. It examines the social bases of segregation, the professionalisation of staff in asylums and institutions, and campaigns for change in the treatment of those segregated from society in institutions.

After studying this course, you should be able to:

• use Goffman’s model of ‘the total institution’ to organise and explain information that has been observed and recorded
• describe the development of large-scale institutions in the nineteenth century which were designed to segregate, control and in some cases, cure, their inmates.