Queering the Interior

Queering the Interior problematizes the familiar space of ‘home’. It deploys a queer lens to view domestic interiors and conventions and uncovers some of the complexities of homemaking for queer people.Each of the book’s six sections focuses on a different room or space inside the home. The journey starts with entryways, and continues through kitchens, living spaces, bedrooms, bathrooms, and finally, closets and studies. In each case up to three specialists bring their disciplinary expertise and queer perspectives to bear. The result is a fascinating collection of essays by scholars from literary studies, geography, sociology, anthropology, history and art history. The contributors use historical and sociological case studies; spatial, art and literary analyses; interviews; and experimental visual approaches to deliver fresh, detailed and grounded perspectives on the home and its queer dimensions. A highly creative approach to the analysis of domestic spaces, Queering the Interior makes an important contribution to the fields of gender studies, social and cultural history, cultural studies, design, architecture, anthropology, sociology, and cultural geography.

List of FiguresAcknowledgementsContributorsIntroduction (Matt Cook, Birkbeck, University of London, UK and Andrew Gorman-Murray, Western Sydney University, Australia)Part One: Openings1. ‘Thrown-togetherness’: Queering the Interior in Visual Perspectives (Andrew Gorman-Murray, Western Sydney University, Australia)2. Entering the Living Room: Sex, Space and Power in a Cross-Cultural and Non-Heteronormative Context (Geir Henning Presterudstuen, Western Sydney University, Australia)3. Stepping into the Entrance Hallway: Glimpses of Public, Private and Personal Notions of Self (Brent Pilkey, University College London, UK)Part Two: Kitchens4. The Kitchen: Lesbian Pulp Fiction’s Radical Conventionalism (Amy Tooth Murphy, University of Roehampton, UK)5. Kitchens: Queering the ‘Man’s’ Kitchen (Angela Meah, University of Sheffield, UK)6. Beyond Kitchen Walls: Queering Domestic Place through Memory and Story-Telling (Rachael Scicluna, University of Kent, UK)Part Three: Living Spaces7. Designs for Living Rooms (Martin Dines, Kingston University, UK)8. The Bedsit (Mark Armstrong, London, UK)9. Safe Space, Silo Storage, Outhouse with a View: Lesbian Garden History (Lisa L. Moore, University of Texas at Austin, USA)Part Four: Bedrooms10. Law and the Bedroom: ‘Living Together as Husband and Wife’? (Daniel Monk, Birkbeck, University of London, UK)11. The Nursery (Matt Cook, Birkbeck, University of London, UK)Part Five: Bathrooms12. The Writing is on the (Lavatory) Wall: Haptic Presence, Modern Design and the Traces of Community (John Potvin, Concordia University, Canada)13. Toilet Training: The Gender and Sexual Body Politics of the Bathroom (Sheila L. Cavanagh, York University, Canada)Part Six: Closets and Studies14. The Closet (Christopher Breward, University of Edinburgh, UK)15. Entering the Eighteenth-Century Closet and Coming Out Today (Dominic Janes, Keele University, UK)16. A Queer Study (Alison Oram, Leeds Beckett University, UK)Index

Matt Cook is Professor of Modern History at Birkbeck University, UK. Andrew Gorman Murray is Lecturer in Geography and Urban Studies at Western Sydney University, Australia.