Art History 391N - S- Interiors

This seminar surveys modernism's long engagement with the totally designed domestic interior from the totally designed domestic interior from the 19th century gesamtkunstwerk to the remarkable 20th century interiors of Frank Lloyd Wright and Eileen Grey to the electronic, media saturated environments of the 1960s anticipated by critic Reyner Banham and beyond. The theoretical writings of Walter Benjamin, Henri Lefebrve, Tonino Griffero and others will inform discussions.

Building (In)equality: Gender Troubles in Enlightenment Architecture
Were there women architects in the eighteenth century? Can we talk about queer
spaces in the Enlightenment? What role did gender play in the development of the
plantation system? How can interior design facilitate sexual seduction, or even lead to
assault? These are some of the questions we will address in this reading seminar,
which centers on the spatial politics of gender and sexuality in the long eighteenth
century. Through a combination of primary (archives, architectural drawings,
eighteenth-century literature, travel accounts), and secondary (queer, feminist, and
intersectional histories) sources, we will work our way through a period of major
social, political, and philosophical change, casting light on the ways in which
architecture and the built environment broad-writ expressed and/or actuated gender
difference, emancipation, or inequality.