Masculinities in Design

A two-day, online symposium to explore the making and unmaking of masculinities in design objects, identities and practices.

Masculinities in Design: Objects, Identities and Practices
Design History and Theory

The objects, identities and practices of design are profoundly shaped by their relationship to cultures of masculinity, but there is a surprising scarcity of historical and theoretical analysis on the subject. Feminist scholarship has rightly prioritised focusing on the structural and social exclusion of women from the history and practice of design, illuminating places where their work has been under-valued or under-recognised. Historians and sociologists of work have established the potency of gender ideologies that drive professionalisation and industrialisation. However, the subject of masculine identities and their role in the making and unmaking of design culture has escaped serious critical attention.

This two day symposium in the department of Design History and Theory, University of Applied Arts Vienna, invites scholars working on objects, practices and identities of design in its widest sense, including fashion, craft, product, architecture and the built environment, alongside scholars of gender studies, cultural history, business history, organization studies, material culture and technology studies, in any time period and in a global context, to propose papers that respond to the following themes and questions:

• How can we theoretically and historically contextualise the relationship between different forms of masculinities and design culture more deeply? How has this relationship been formed over time, across social and geographical spaces and between design practices?
• What or who are the agents in shaping, performing and representing cultures of masculinities in design?
• How does the study of masculinities in design culture put different emphasis on gender binaries and boundaries, such as public / private; professional / amateur; industrial /domestic, design /making?
How can we move beyond these binaries?
• What is the relationship between entrepreneurship, innovation and masculinities in design?
• How do designed objects themselves illuminate, or efface, gendered narratives?
• How might a more nuanced history or theory of masculinities in design better inform the politics of gender and sexuality in design culture?

Proposals should be sent to masculinitiesindesign@gmail.com before the 14th January deadline and should not exceed 500 words, including references.

Selected papers from the symposium will contribute to a forthcoming Special Issue in the journal Design and Culture.

Keynote Speaker:
Dr Joseph McBrinn, University of Ulster, UK

Organising committee:
Leah Armstrong, University of Applied Arts Vienna, Austria Leah.Armstrong@uni-ak.ac.at
Luca Csepely-Knorr, Manchester Metropolitan University , UK L.Csepely-Knorr@mmu.ac.uk
Pınar Kaygan, University of Southern Denmark kay@iti.sdu.dk
Zoë Thomas, University of Birmingham, UK Z.Thomas@bham.ac.uk

Online event, 24-25 May 2022

Program
Tuesday 24 May

Welcome / Introductory remarks
10:00 BST (GMT+1)

(De) Constructing Gender Identities
10:30-12:00 BST (GMT+1)

Chair, Svava Riesto, University of Copenhagen

Czaee Malpani, Jindal School of Art and Architecture, OP Jindal Global University, ‘Scaling Masculinity’.

Joy Burgess, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK ‘Masculinity and Marital Status: A comparative study of three women landscape architects in postwar Britain’.

Maya Wassell Smith, Cardiff University, ‘Sailor Craft: Men, Making, Connections’.

Lunch break
12:00-13:00 BST (GMT+1)

Interior Masculinities
13:00-14:30 BST (GMT +1)

Chair: Joseph McBrinn, University of Ulster

Vanessa Vanden Berghe, Kingston University, London, UK ‘Oliver Hill at Valewood Farm and Daneway House: Designing a queer life in the British Countryside’.

Benoit Beaulieu, Concordia University Montreal, Canada, ‘Therapeutic Design: Robert de Montesquiou’s Queer Privacy’.

Patrick Greaney, University of Colorado Boulder, ‘Masculinity Machines: Braun, Beate Uhse, and West German Interiors in the 1950s’.

Comfort break
14:30-15:00 BST (GMT+1)

Playing with Gender Identities
15:00-16:30 BST (GMT+1)

Chair: Marie Dalby, Uppsala University, Sweden

Bilge Koyun and Damla Tonuk, METU , Turkey ‘(Re)Materialization of Binaries: From Gender Stereotypes to Contemporary Masculine Product Characters’.

Michael Anthony DeAnda, and Gabriel Rickabaugh, De Paul University, Chicago, USA ‘Radical Faeries and Magic Circles: Designing in and from Queer History’.

Caighlan Smith, Memorial University of Newfoundland, ‘The Man, the Myth, the Avatar: Masculinities in Video Game Design’.

Roundtable discussion
16:30-17:00 BST (GMT+1)

Wednesday 25 May
Keynote Paper
10:00 - 12:00 BST (GMT+1)

Dr Joseph McBrinn

Engendering Men: Masculinity and the History of Design

Lunch Break
12:00-13:00 BST (GMT+1)

Fashioning Masculinities
13:00-14:30 BST (GMT +1)

Chair, Alistair O’Neill, University of the Arts London

Eren Ileri, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Burak Tasdizen, Independent researcher, ‘Masculinities and/as Design: Exploring Space Suit Designs of Commercial Space Travel’.

Marta Francheschini, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, ‘Psicologia del Vestire: Industrial design and gender identity’.

Leo Stefani, The Courthauld Institute of Art, London, ‘Sitting like a Financier – Seats, Taste and Financier masculinity in Eighteenth-Century France’.

Representing Gender Identities
15:00-16:30 BST (GMT +1)

Chair, Neal Shasore, The London School of Architecture

Gerlinde Verhaeghe, ETH Zurich, ‘Carlo Mollino and the use of Female Form in Male Self-Representation’.

Elizabeth Keslacy, Miami University, USA, ‘The Architect’s Masculinity: Professionalization and the Spectre of the Female Architect in Victorian England’

Roundtable discussion
16:30-17:00 BST (GMT+1)

Concluding remarks
17:00-17:30 BST (GMT+1)