ARTH 357 Studies in the History of Craft & Decorative Arts: Sexing the Interior

• Tuesdays, 11:45am-2:15pm
• EV-1-615
• Instructor: Dr. John Potvin

Do interiors have a gender or sex? How can we set out to talk about the sexuality of space? How do gender and sexuality inform, impact or deny certain types of sexualities? How is domestic space gendered? How do interiors inform our reception and perception of an occupant’s gender and/or sexuality? How has the development of the modern interior impacted the experience and expression of subjectivity and identity? Do certain types of domestic spaces act as a form of ‘closet’, a refuge from public surveillance? How has modernity and modernism affected the way we live and the way we express our sexual selves through the construct of space and interior design? How has the rise of a bourgeois political will impacted the domestic interior and sexuality itself?
Through various case studies from the eighteenth century to the Second World War, this course aims to answer the series of questions listed above by exploring the shifting and complex intersections between gender, sexuality and the modern interior.