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Bringing together a collection of high-profile authors, Biographies and Space presents essays exploring the relationship between biography and space and how specific subjects are used as a means of explaining sets of social, cultural and spatial relationships.
Biographical methods of historical investigation can bring out the authentic voice of subjects, revealing personal meanings and strategies in space as well as providing a means to analyze relations between the personal and the social. Writing about both actual (architectural) and imagined (pictorial) space, the authors consider issues of gender, childhood, sexuality and race, highlighting an increasing fluidity and interaction between theory, methods and history.
Biographies and Space is an original and exciting new book, with direct relevance to both architectural and art history.
List of contents
Introduction Dana Arnold and Joanna Sofaer 1. (Auto)Biographies and Space Dana Arnold 2. Living the Romantic Landscape (after Deleuze and Guattari) Andrew Ballantyne 3. ‘Life as a ride on the Metro’: Pierre Bourdieu on Biography and Space Hélène Lipstadt 4. ‘This scarlet intruder’: biography interrupted in the dining room at Tatton Park Mansion Eleanor Quince 5. Amsterdam eternal and fleeting: time in two personal histories Nancy Stieber 6. Turner: space, persona, authority Sam Smiles 7. Mapping the 'bios' in two graphic systems with gender in mind: Reading Van Gogh through Charlotte Salomon and vice versa Griselda Pollock 8. Biography and spatial experience in contemporary disaporic art in Britain Dorothy Rowe 9. The art of reconciliation: autobiography and objectivity in the work of Aldo Rossi Belgin Turan Özkaya 10. Disinter/est: Digging up our childhood. Authenticity, ambiguity and failure in the auto/biography of the infant self Joanna Sofaer and Joshua Sofaer
About the author
Dana Arnold is Professor of Architectural History at the University of Southampton. She has written extensively on art and architectural history and theory. Recent books include
Rural Urbanism (2006);
Art History: a very short introduction (2004) and the edited volume
Rethinking Architectural Historiography (2006)
Joanna Sofaer is Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Southampton. She has published widely on ancient and modern material culture. She is the author of
The Body as Material Culture: A Theoretical Osteoarchaeology (2006), and editor of
Material Identities (2007).
Summary
Highly original and thought provoking essays by a group of internationally recognized scholars consider issues of gender, childhood, sexuality and race in respect of the relationship between biographies and space. The result is a wide ranging exploration of the formation of identity.
