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The University of Southampton
Winchester School of Art

Domesticating Desire: Looking for good sex and furniture in 1970s Britain Seminar

Jo Turney
Time:
16:00 - 17:30
Date:
8 November 2017
Venue:
Harvard Suite (Room Number 3032), WSA

For more information regarding this seminar, please email Professor John Armitage at J.Armitage@soton.ac.uk .

Event details

This paper acts as an introduction and overview to my new book project 'In Private: 1970s Domestic Interior Design in the UK & USA', Bloomsbury, 2019. Initially, I will start by outlining the themes of the book, which critique socio-cultural and political issues in relation to design and its consumption at home, all of which are framed by a room setting. For example, the UK bedroom chapter 'Duvet Entendre: bedding down with the Continentals' is a discussion centred on entry [Yes. Sadly, this is also a pun] into the Common Market, in which items of furniture, accessories and home décor were popularly advertised and consumed, via a myriad of crude national stereotypes, as a means of improving the lack-lustre sex-lives of the British. Via this introductory mapping, the paper will, by way of providing a case study, turn its attention to gender and sexual relations and the tactile home. In 'Flock me Senseless' (living room) the emphasis is on the domestic interior as a site of seduction (Baudrillard) and desire (Lacan) in which the domestic woman's body is replaced by the furniture. Much of my writing is situated within everyday life and considers the construction of meaning from a variety of ordinary and popular sources, and therefore constructs such as objects, their promotion and consumption, might also be informed by comedy, television, novels, magazines, etc. As a method, I anticipate to establish how a post-permissive society started to behave and exhibit these characteristics, bringing sex and new ways of thinking and being, home.

Speaker information

Dr Jo Turney ,is an Associate Professor in Fashion & Design at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton. Her interests focus on everyday dress and textile practices since the 1970s, with specific focus on those considered 'marginal' or 'deviant'. She is the author of Floral Frocks (with Rosemary Harden) [2007] Antique Collectors Club, The Culture of Knitting, (2009) Berg, and co-editor of Images in Time (2010) Wunderkammer. She is also the contributing editor of Fashion and Crime: dressing for deviance (2018) I B Tauris, and the co-editor of the journal Clothing Cultures, published by Intellect. She has published widely on knitting, T.V crime, and masculinity, behaviour & fashion. She has a cat.

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