This three-day interdisciplinary conference will feature academic papers that explore the question of what makes a home and how homes make us. Papers will consider homes both past and present and from a variety of perspectives such as material culture studies, art history, gender studies, anthropology, postcolonial studies, critical race studies, and geography.

Conference Programme:

6 May: Spotlight: Sussex Research on the Domestic Interior

  • 1:00 Registration
  • 1:15 Welcome speech
  • Dr. Meaghan Clarke, Senior Lecturer in Art History and Director of Doctoral Studies, University of Sussex
  • 1:30-3:00 Making and Un-Making Home (Chair: Cathrin Yarnell, Sussex)
  • Chelsea Olsen, Department of English, “Homemaking as Art-Making: The Creative Repurposing of Domesticity in Carrie Stettheimer’s Dollhouse and Salon”
  • Jessica Hammett, Department of History, “Turning the Post into a Home in Civil Defence during the Second World War”
  • Alexa Neale, Department of History, “Un-Making a Home: Domestic Murder in Postwar London”
  • 3:00-3:30 Coffee and Tea Break
  • 3:30-5:30 Home and Identity (2-Part Panel with a short break) (Chair: Alexa Neale, Sussex)
  • Dr. Katie Walsh, Department of Geography, “Domestic Practices of British Migrant Returnees in Later Life”
  • Emily Priscott, Department of History, “How can you call this a home?: Social and Cultural Constructions of Single Living, 1960-1990”
  • Anne Stutchbury, Department of Art History, “ ‘At Home’ with the Beales’ of Standen: An Examination of Treasured Possessions and Family Identity”
  • Paula Riddy, Department of Art History, “Hope and Glory: Representations of Thomas Hope’s Country Seat, the Deepdene”

7 May 2015: National and International Perspectives on the Domestic Interior Part I

  • 10:00 Registration
  • 10:15 Welcome Speech
  • Dr. Maurice Howard, Professor of History of Art, University of Sussex
  • 10:30 – 12:00 Defining Home: Interventions in Architecture and Design (Chair: Paula Riddy, Sussex)
  • Professor Thomas Barrie, North Carolina State University, “Homelessness, Homecoming and the Task of Architecture”
  • Dr. Olivier Vallerand, Université Laval, “What Makes a Home? Elmgreen & Dragset’s Imaginary Domesticities”
  • Colin Fanning, Philadelphia Museum of Art, “Furnishing Fun: LEGO and the Domestic Interior”
  • 12:00-1:00 Lunch (Provided)
  • 1:00 – 2:30 The Home as Contact Zone (Chair: Elizabeth Heath, Sussex)
  • Dr. Emma Martin, National Museums Liverpool, “The Hybrid Home: Displaying transculturality in the domestic spaces of Calcutta, Gangtok and Lhasa”
  • Andrea Muendelein, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, “The Metropolitan Hotel as a Space of Encounter”
  • Dr. Alice Planel, Kingston University, “On the Threshold: Domestic Spaces in the work of Samta Benyahia and Zineb Sedira”
  • 2:30-3:00 Coffee and Tea Break
  • 3:00 – 4:30 Gender Articulations (Chair: Hannah Jordan, Sussex)
  • Whitney Stewart, Rice University, “Activist Domesticity: The New Negro Woman and the Liberating Power of Home”
  • Dr. Karen Lipsedge, Kingston University, “‘Domestic Man’: Men, Domestic Space and the Eighteenth-Century Novel”
  • Dr. Patricia McCarthy, Independent scholar, “A Room of Their Own: Private Space for Women in 18th-Century Houses”

8 May 2015: National and International Perspectives on the Domestic Interior Part II

  • 09:30-10:30 Keynote lecture
  • Dr. Flora Dennis, Senior Lecturer in Art History, University of Sussex
  • 10:30-11:00 Coffee and Tea Break
  • 11:00-12:30 Narratives of Home (Chair: Chelsea Olsen, University of Sussex)
  • Patrick Preston, University of East Anglia, “Coming Out of the Concrete: Queer Domesticity in Jonathan Harvey’s Beautiful Thing”
  • Elin Jones, Queen Mary University of London, “Lower Deck Domesticity on board a Naval Warship, 1756-1815”
  • Kuang Vivian Sheng, University of York, “Yin Xiuzhen’s Portable Cities – The Fabrication of ‘Home’ in the World”
  • 12:30-1:00 Lunch (Provided)
  • 1:00-2:30 Childhood and Family (Chair: Anne Stutchbury, University of Sussex)
  • Dr. Anja Ebert, Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nuremberg, “Depictions of The Family Saying Grace: Images of Ideal Family Life?”
  • Alastair McClure, University of Cambridge, “Constructing a Home through Violence: Patriarchal deals in Colonial India 1856-1910”
  • Briley Rasmussen, University of Leicester, "Your Living Room Is A Battleground: MoMA, Good Design and the Construct of Creative Vitality in Children"
  • 2:30 Closing Remarks

Please register via Eventbrite1 or contact Michele Robinson & Emma Doubt (makingahome2015[at]gmail.com) with any queries.

  • 1. https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/myevent?eid=16220479892