[Jennifer Komar Olivarez]

Historic Interiors Group Book Event Monday, March 28, 2pm EST (11 am PST, 12 pm MST, 1 pm CST, 7:00 GMT) 

New Approaches to Interiors in New Books  

Organized by the SAH Historic Interiors Group (HIG), this online event concerns methods and approaches to race, gender, sexuality and politics in two new books which can help in understanding historic interiors.

Kristina Wilson, Mid-Century Modernism and the American Body: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Power in Design (Princeton U. Press, 2021)Examining advice manuals, advertisements in Life and Ebony, furniture, art, and more, Wilson offers a powerful new look at how codes of race, gender, and identity influenced—and were influenced by—Modern design and shaped its presentation to consumers.

Stephen Vider, The Queerness of Home: Gender, Sexuality, and the Politics of Domesticity after World War II (U. of Chicago Press, 2021)Retelling LGBTQ history from the inside out, Vider reveals the surprising ways that the home became, and remains, a charged space in battles for social and economic justice, making it clear that LGBTQ people not only realized new forms of community and culture for themselves—they remade the possibilities of home life for everyone.

Both books investigate American domestic environments of the mid and late twentieth-century and both break new ground by respectively addressing the politics of race, gender, and sexuality. The authors closely read little-known primary sources, interrogate objects and spaces, and develop new terms to explain the complexities of the domestic environment. The session will be of interest to anyone who works within the broad, interdisciplinary field of interiors.

The 75-minute event will begin with two short 20-minute presentations in which the authors will introduce their books and reflect on their methods and approaches to the field. The co-chairs of the Events and Conferences Committee of the Historic Interiors Group (Timothy M. Rohan and Imogen Hart) and Tara A. Dudley of HIG will then ask questions and moderate a discussion with questions from the audience.

Kristina Wilson is Professor of Art History at Clark University. In addition to Mid-Century Modernism and the American Body, she is the author of two award-winning books, The Modern Eye: Stieglitz, MoMA, and the Art of the Exhibition (2009) and Livable Modernism: Interior Decorating and Design During the Great Depression (2004). She has also written numerous articles and essays on twentieth-century modern design, art, and museum culture in the U.S., and co-curated Cyanotypes: Photography’s Blue Period  (2016) at the Worcester Art Museum.

Stephen Vider is Assistant Professor of History and Director of the Public History Initiative at Cornell University. In addition to The Queerness of Home, his work has appeared in American Quarterly, Gender & History, and the Public Historian among other places. Vider also curated the exhibition AIDS at Home: Art and Everyday Activism at the Museum of the City of New York in 2017.

Timothy M. Rohan teaches architectural history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is the author of The Architecture of Paul Rudolph (Yale, 2014) and many articles about postwar architecture in a range of journals from JSAH to Art in America. He is currently working on a new book about late twentieth century interiors in Manhattan.

Imogen Hart (University of California, Berkeley) is the author of Arts and Crafts Objects (2010). Other publications include Rethinking the Interior, c. 1867–1896: Aestheticism and Arts and Crafts (2010), co-edited with Jason Edwards, and Sculpture and the Decorative in Britain and Europe, Seventeenth Century to Contemporary (2020), co-edited with Claire Jones.

Tara A. Dudley is an Assistant Professor in The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture where she teaches courses in architectural history, interior design history, and historic preservation. Her work reflects an interdisciplinary approach to the study of cultural resources with a focus on nineteenth-century American design, African American design and architectural history, historic preservation, and material culture. She is the author Building Antebellum New Orleans: Free People of Color and Their Influence (UT Press, 2021).

To register: Free of Charge  Monday, March 28, 2pm EST (11 am PST, 12 pm MST, 1 pm CST, 7:00 GMT)

You are invited to a Zoom meeting. When: Mar 28, 2022 02:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)  Register in advance for this meeting:https://umass-amherst.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwvcu-rrD8jGNbgzgL9fZw51GuAvM_La0qH

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

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