UCL Urban Laboratory

Recognising that gender has long been an established framework in feminist architectural discourse, Brent Pilkey, The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, and Rachel Scicluna, Faculty of Health and Social Care, The Open University, recently facilitated ‘Sexuality at Home’, a two day event which focused on sexuality and all things domestic. The film event and conference - held 10 and 11 December 2012 – looked at the spatiality of the themes across varied disciplines from anthropology to visual culture. The conference, the first of its kind, reached maximum capacity six weeks in advance and drew attention from scholars both locally and internationally. With three short films, a full length feature film, eight paper presentations, two keynote lectures (architect Aaron Betsky being one) and a queer domestic performance the second evening, the events showcased creative and on-going humanities and social-science based research that investigates the ways in which sexual subjectivity relates to and plays out in the everyday space of home.

This event was supported by the Bartlett School of Architecture, and UCL Graduate School and in association with the Centre for Studies of Home, The Geffrye Museum of Home, Histories of Home Subject Specialist Network (SSN) and the UCL Urban Laboratory. 

Thanks to Barbara Penner (UCL), Ben Campkin (UCL) and Andrew Gorman-Murray (University of Western Sydney).

Please click on the links below to access the programme and abstracts: 

Programme

Abstracts and speaker biographies

A selection of audio from the event is also available to listen to below.

Brent Pilkey: Introduction    

Aaron Betsky: Keynote Address. Revisiting Queer Space Architecture and Same-Sex Desire    

Matt Cook: Taking Sexual Politics Home - Derek Jarman and Queering Domesticity  

Martin Dines: Vertical and Horizontal Relationships in the Middle-Class Home in Postwar British Queer Novels    

Q+A: Queering History and Queering Domesticity Through Literary Work    

Carin Tunaker: Family Fission - the Meaning of Home to Homeless LGBT Youth   

Martina Klett-Davies: What's Love Got to Do with it    

Matt Smith: Queering the National Trust    

Q+A: Intimacy, Home and Homelessness 

Carla Barrett: Changing Experiences of Care-Work in Contemporary UK    

Dana Kaplan: Sex Not at Home - Sex Work Apartments in Tel Aviv and Neoliberal Sexuality  

Q+A: Sexuality, Gender, Work and Home   

Andrew Gorman-Murray: Queer Domicide, LGBT Displacement and Home Loss in Natural Disaster Impact Response and Recovery