Domesticity

Consuming Technology in a Closed Society: Household Appliances in Soviet Urban Homes of the Brezhnev Era

by Natalya Chernyshova

Published in: Ab Imperio. Studies of New Imperial History and Nationalism in the Post Soviet Space, Issue 2 (July 2011), pp 188-220

For all its relative isolation from the West, underpinned by claims that a socialist way of life was fundamentally... more For all its relative isolation from the West, underpinned by claims that a socialist way of life was fundamentally different from that of the capitalist world, the Soviet Union under developed socialism experienced changes that were not at all unique or, strictly speaking, specifically socialist. One of the areas where this was evident is the field of consumption. Living standards were improving since the mid-1950s, but the Brezhnev era saw a veritable boom in personal consumption, which gave rise to a host of social and cultural consequences. This article takes up a case study of home technology goods, such as washing machines, refrigerators and television sets, in urban areas to demonstrate that the processes taking place in closed socialist urban society of the late 1960s-early 1980s had a surprising number of basic parallels with Western consumer cultures. It shows how during this time Soviet buyers rather quickly developed agency as modern consumers of technology, growing increasingly well-informed, selective and consumerist in their approach to domestic appliances and other electric durables. In exploring these social trends, I want to shift the emphasis from a focus on failures of socialist production of goods towards an examination of cultures of consumption of goods within different, indeed antagonistic, political and economic settings. This should help provide a more sophisticated and comprehensive portrait of lived ‘mature socialism’ than anecdotes about queues and shortages can achieve.

“Millions Love Lucy: Commodification and the Lucy Phenomenon.”

by Lori Landay

The ideology of mass consumer culture is central to all the levels of the Lucy phenomenon: in individual episodes that... more The ideology of mass consumer culture is central to all the levels of the Lucy phenomenon: in individual episodes that revolve around commodities, in the "good life" portrayed in the series, in Ball's public persona as "just a housewife," in the myriad of products tied to the series in the fifties (comic books, paper dolls, furniture, clothes), as a syndicated series, and in the nostalgic products popular today. At the core of the phenomenon is a juxtaposition of public and private embodied in both the character of Lucy and her creator, the popular public woman Lucille Ball. A textual reading of the episode "Lucy Does a TV Commercial" in the contexts of other aspects of the Lucy phenomenon (Ball's public persona, audience knowledge of the "real" marriage of Ball and Arnaz), and other popular articulations of gender and middle-class life in the postwar era suggests how the Lucy phenomenon was framed by and broke the frames of commodification. Overall, the series offers consumption as the solution to Lucy's dissatisfaction, an example of the consumerist-ethos that presented private solutions to public problems. However, at the same time that the phenomenon participated in the mass consumer economy, the show's comedy played on conflicts and anxieties about consumption and domesticity.

The Flux of Domesticity and the Exotic in a Wartime Melodrama

by Chikako Nagayama

2009. Published in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 34(2).

Scopophobia/Scopophilia: electric light and the anxiety of the gaze in postwar American architecture

by Margaret Maile Petty

chapter published in ‘Atomic Dwelling: Anxiety, Domesticity, and Postwar Architecture’ edited by Robin Schuldenfrei (Routledge, 2012), pp. 45-63.

In the postwar era interest in the “dematerializing” of traditional boundaries between enclosure and exposure in the... more In the postwar era interest in the “dematerializing” of traditional boundaries between enclosure and exposure in the private dwelling was promoted in a variety of popular media. Transparency became an essential component of “good living.” However, the increasing use of glass in residential architecture brought significant challenges to the occupation of domestic spaces. Primary among these concerns was the psychic dislocation caused by extensive visual exposure. An article in the New York Times called attention to this problem, reporting that some residents of glass buildings “develop dizziness” as well “a fear of being watched.” For many a sense of vulnerability, of being seen without being able to see, was greatly amplified in glass-enclosed spaces after dark. To address these concerns, and provide control over the visual conditions of the private dwelling, electric lighting was proposed as singularly powerful tool in the modulation of the domestic environment. Purposeful lighting was suggested as a means to create “atmosphere” and express “personality” as well as to control the transparency of glass enclosures after dark. This paper explores the use of electric lighting in the postwar era as a means to both address and mediate the gaze in the visual and social “scripting” of the domestic environment. Culling from film and cultural theory to investigate the social and aesthetic conditions “good living,” this study calls attention to the role of electric lighting in the composition of performative spaces within the postwar dwelling.

Curtains and the Soft Architecture of the American Postwar Domestic Environment

by Margaret Maile Petty

published in 'Home Cultures' vol. 9, issue 1 (2012): pp. 35-56.

This article investigates the role of soft architecture and interior effects—including window treatments, textiles,... more This article investigates the role of soft architecture and interior effects—including window treatments, textiles, and electric lighting—in the physical and social construction of the postwar domestic environment in the USA. In this period the American home became an increasingly visual and visible space, defined more by the view out and the view in than by traditional conditions of domestic enclosure. Popular how-to columns and home decoration articles offered homemakers a variety of mechanisms for sustaining the appearance and psychological comfort of the modern domestic setting. Examining a range of popular decorative strategies used to mediate residential picture windows and window walls, this study challenges the deep-seated cultural and disciplinary biases associated with both the design and study of domestic architecture and interiors. Drawing upon historical documents and contemporary theorizations of the interior, this paper argues for the agency of soft architecture in the domestication of modern residential architecture.

KEYWORDS: postwar interiors, domestic architecture, picture windows, electric lighting, curtains, Dorothy Liebes, Richard Kelly

The Relative Duties of a Man: Domestic Medicine in England and France, ca. 1685–1740

by Lisa Smith

Journal of Family History, 31, 3 (2006): 237-256.

The Naked Hero and Model Man: Costumed Identity in Comic Book Narratives

by David Coughlan

Published in "Heroes of Film, Comics and American Culture: Essays on Real and Fictional Defenders of Home." Ed. Lisa DeTora. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009. 234-52.

Comic book superheroes often display dual identities, which they dress in contrasting ways. Wearing an identifying... more Comic book superheroes often display dual identities, which they dress in contrasting ways. Wearing an identifying costume, they are superheroes, fighting evil and saving the world; out of costume, and wearing instead their civilian identity, they try to live a normal life. Clothes, then, make them a ‘man’ (and it is male superheroes who are the focus of this paper), but it is only in costume that the man can be ‘super’. The comic book hero, colourfully costumed, but to all intents and purposes visually naked, displays his power and sense of invulnerability, while at the same time hiding the secret identity which is his greatest weakness, because it means a world where the hero is as powerless as his innocent family and friends. For the sake of those he loves, therefore, the comic book hero ironically removes himself from the familial, communal, and even legal worlds he has sworn to protect. The effect of this is to preserve for the, predominantly male, reader the stereotypical and simplified power fantasies so often fostered by superhero stories, where any failings or shortcomings in the domestic sphere are compensated for in a secret world of heroic achievement, despite the fact that the defining qualities of the hero’s costumed world, the secrecy, subterfuge, violence, and intimidation, are at odds with, if not a betrayal of, the values of his home-life. This raises the question of how the superhero relates to the domestic, and what it means to be a superhero at home. This essay argues that the costumed form of the comic book superhero embodies a dominant masculinity which is identified in opposition to all things feminine, including the domestic. However, it will be argued that this apparent exclusion of the domestic can be reinterpreted as an exclusion from the domestic. The hero ultimately removes himself from the home because he cannot trust himself not to harm his family, given the violence that defines him as a man.

Domesticidad, ilusión de intimidad y estrategias de representación en el Isidro (1599), de Lope de Vega Carpio

by Antonio Sanchez Jimenez

HB 645, Settler Sexuality, and the Politics of Local Asian Domesticity in Hawai‘i

by Bianca Isaki

Vol 1, No 2 settler colonial studies (2011)

At Home in the Museum: James Speyer's Domestication of the Modern Exhibition

by Maura Lucking

Presented at the Minnesota Society of Architectural Historians annual conference, 2011.

Studying Advice: Historiography, Methodology, Commentary, Bibliography

by Grace Lees-Maffei

In 'Domestic Design Advice', ed. Grace Lees-Maffei, a special issue of The Journal of Design History, vol. 16, no. 1 (2003), pp. 1-14.

This introduction considers general methodological problems attendant upon the use of advice literature for historical... more This introduction considers general methodological problems attendant upon the use of advice literature for historical understanding as well as considering the use of advice literature in design history and introducing the nature of the advice writers and subjects discussed in the following articles. The use of advice in the writing of design history involves the negotiation of several issues: the positioning of advice at an appropriate point within or between the categories of production or consumption; the extent to which prescriptive material may be taken as indicative of practice; the status of advice as a genre between fact and fiction; the similarly contested status of historical discourse and the often nebulous border between advice and advertising, and the extent to which published advice has been endowed with professional or amateur status.

Open access link to pdf: http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/16/1/1
Open access link to pre-print text: http://hdl.handle.net/2299/742

Introduction: Professionalization as a Focus in Interior Design History

by Grace Lees-Maffei

In 'Professionalizing Interior Design, 1870-1970', a special issue of The Journal of Design History, ed. Grace Lees-Maffei and Anne Wealleans, vol. 21, no. 1 (2008), pp. 1-18.

In the industrialized West, the design of the interior has been conceptualized as a domestic and amateur phenomenon,... more In the industrialized West, the design of the interior has been conceptualized as a domestic and amateur phenomenon, and the domestic interior has been conceptualized as a feminine realm. This introductory article aims to overcome the tendency to conflate the interior, the domestic, the amateur and the feminine in three ways. Firstly, it engages with a broad definition of the interior, encompassing professional and amateur spaces in both domestic and extra-domestic contexts. Secondly, it examines processes of professionalization which, from 1870 to 1970, moved the practice and product of interior design beyond its amateur origins. Thirdly, the association of femininity and domesticity so fundamental to Western patriarchal society is here replaced with a concern for the professional practice of women, and men, as gendered subjects. These points are addressed in turn in the three parts of the article. This article argues for analysis of the historical processes by which professional status in conferred upon the act of designing. Professionalization is an extremely useful and revealing focus for understanding the genesis, characteristics and significance of interior design and design and its histories more broadly.

Key Words: design history • gender • historiography • interior design • professionalization.

Open access link to pdf: http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/21/1/1
Open access link to pre-print text: http://hdl.handle.net/2299/4561

The sublime in the work of Cornelia Parker.

by Luke White

co-authored with Claire Pajaczkowska. Published within the book /The Sublime Now/ ed. Luke White and Claire Pajaczkowska (Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009).

The essay makes close readings of 5 works by Cornelia Parker, spanning her career. It discusses them in particular in... more The essay makes close readings of 5 works by Cornelia Parker, spanning her career. It discusses them in particular in relation to the sublime, and notes Parker's increasing interest in issues of nature and ecological crisis. The essay proposes that Parker's work stages the collapse of a series of binary oppositions which the sublime has long been a mode of articulating (sacred/profane, horizontal/vertical, material/immaterial, humour/horror, sublime/ridiculous, elevated/abject, nature/culture, public/domestic). The essay argues that such a collpse is itself a form of the sublime. Inasmuch as these are oppositions around which gendered identities are constructed, Parker's sublime plays a subversive or transgressive function. We argue for the importance of her work as an artistic articulation of the contemporary sublime.

Taste and Class in Late Ottoman Beirut

by toufoul abou-hodeib

International Journal of Middle East Studies 43 (2011), 475-492.

This article deals with the material aspects of the late Ottoman home in Beirut, focusing on the notion of taste... more This article deals with the material aspects of the late Ottoman home in Beirut, focusing on the notion of taste (dhawq) and its role in constructing class boundaries. It starts by locating the Beirut home in its urban context and exploring the various principles of living embodied by the “central-hall house” typology. These principles are then linked to the discourse of domesticity, placing the latter in its regional context and investigating how it attempted to translate abstract notions of class, “oriental” difference, and civic duty into a daily praxis revolving around taste. It looks at how intellectuals used the notion of “taste” to articulate a prescriptive middle-class domesticity revolving around the woman as manager of the house, privileging moderation and authenticity in consumption habits, and articulating a middle-class culture distinguished from both the wealthier classes and ifranji, or European, culture.

Taking taste as developed in intellectual circles to be representative of modern taste in general risks reproducing a discourse that marginalized a large part of an emerging middle class as not-yet-modern and as failing, because of its difference, to integrate into the overall experience of modernity. Using Beirut court records, advertisements, and trade reports, the article reconstructs elements of a form of taste not presented in the intellectual corpus, one that privileged novelty and abundance over authenticity and moderation. Arguing for the potentiality of new objects for subverting the existing social order, the article explores how one such object, a phonograph, opened interpretive possibilities in the gendered rigidity of Hanafi (Muslim) court procedures.

On a more general level, the aim of the article is twofold. First, it rethinks the explicit and implicit relationships of modernity in an Ottoman city to “Western” modernity. It, thus, deals with the category of “ifranji” (Western/European) as an attempt at articulating and creating cultural differences by local intellectual actors, rather than as a mere reflection of the separation of East and West. Second, the article also brings back the issue of class into the history of the Middle East, locating some of the early attempts at creating a politically relevant and culturally homogenous “middle class” and dealing with some of the limitations of such projects.

Spade Doesn't Look Exactly Starved: Country Music and the Negotiation of Women's Domesticity In Cold War Los Angeles

by Peter La Chapelle

chapter in collected volume _A Boy Named Sue: Gender and Country Music_

Review, LAVA: Home of the Future

by Anuradha Chatterjee

Eija-Liisa Ahtila's 'Talo/The House'

by Wood Roberdeau

Exhibition guide text, Dallas Museum of Art, 2002

Home on the Range: Space, Nation, and Mobility In John Ford's The Searchers

by Julia Leyda

Focusing on representations of mobility, space, and national identity, this essay reads John Ford's movie The... more Focusing on representations of mobility, space, and national identity, this essay reads John Ford's movie The Searchers (1956) in terms of its deployment of American “domestic” space, meaning both “home-centered” and in opposition to “foreign.” I argue that The Searchers ...