CSDI - The Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB) Centre for the Study of the Domestic Interior, based at the Royal College of Art in London, brings together three institutions: the Royal College of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Bedford Centre for the History of Women at Royal Holloway, University of London. Launched in September 2001, its goal is to develop new histories of the home, its contents, and its representation. It pursues research into the changing appearance and layout of rooms in a range of buildings, from tenements to palaces; the objects that furnished those rooms; the ways rooms and objects were depicted; the manner in which people used them; and how they thought about them.

Gender, Taste, and Material Culture
in Britain and North America in the
Long Eighteenth Century

The Huntington
San Marino, California
21-22 May 2004

PROGRAMME

Friday, 21 May 2004
8:30 Registration & Coffee
9:30 Welcome: Robert C. Ritchie (The Huntington)

Remarks: A V (AHRB Centre for the Study of the Domestic Interior, Royal Holloway, University of London)

Session 1 Spaces
Moderator: Shelley Bennett (The Huntington)

Bernard Herman (University of Delaware)
'Tabletop Conversations: Material Culture and Everyday Life in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World'

Adrian Evans (University of the West of England)
'Spacing Identities and Identifying with Spaces: Towards a Performative Understanding of Gender, Taste, and the Domestic Interior in Eighteenth-Century Britain'

12:00 Lunch

1:00 Session 2 Acquisition
Moderator: John Brewer (California Institute of Technology)

Claire Walsh (University of Warwick)
'Going Shopping in Early Modern Britain: Men, Women, Shopping Styles, and the Art of Decision Making'

Ann Smart Martin (University of Wisconsin)
'Ribbons of Desire: Gendered Stories in the World of Goods'

Session 3 Domestic Economies
Moderator: Carole Shammas (University of Southern California)

Adrienne Hood (University of Toronto)
'White on White: The Domestic Manufacture and Use of Cotton Counterpanes in Britain and North America, 1790-1860'

Jonathan White (University of Southampton)
'The Labouring-Class Domestic Interior in Eighteenth-Century Social Thought'

Saturday, 22 May 2004
9:00 Registration & Coffee
9:30 Remarks: Viviana Narotsky and Hannah Greig (AHRB Centre for the Study of the Domestic Interior, Royal College of Art)

Session 4 Things
Moderator: Kathryn Norberg (University of California, Los Angeles)

Hannah Greig (AHRB Centre for the Study of the Domestic Interior, Royal College of Art)
'Leading the Fashion: The Material Culture of London's Beau Monde'

Susan Stabile (Texas A & M University)
'Curious Tastes: A Philadelphia Wonder Cabinet, 1730-1840'

12:00 Lunch

1.00 Session 5 Appearances
Moderator: Ann Bermingham (University of California, Santa Barbara)

Wendy Bellion (Omohundro Institute of Early American
History and Culture)
'Tricksters in the House: Imitation Painting in Early America'

Kate Retford (Birkbeck University of London)
'Patrilineal Portraiture? Gender and Genealogy in the Eighteenth-Century Country House'

Session 6 Readings
Moderator: Felicity Nussbaum (University of California, Los Angeles)

Karen Lipsedge (Kingston University)
'"Enter into thy close": Women, Closet Culture, and the Eighteenth-Century Novel'

Robert St. George (University of Pennsylvania)
'Reading Spaces in Eighteenth-Century New England'

____________________________________

A Conference at The Huntington
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, California 91108
+1 (626) 405-2194

For further details about the conference, please contact cpowell@huntington.org