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Professor John Potvin honoured with art book prize

January 29, 2016
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John Potvin, associate professor of art history, has been awarded the Historians of British Art Book Prize for his book, Bachelors of a Different Sort: Queer Aesthetics, Material Culture and the Modern Interior in Britain, published with Manchester University Press.

In Bachelors of a Different Sort, Potvin shows that bachelors once held an ambivalent, uncomfortable and sometimes unfriendly position in society. That was especially true for “bachelors of a different sort” — queer men.

The book gives readers an inside look at turn-of-the century bachelorhood by offering case studies of the private lives and homes of several prominent gay bachelors living in Britain. Potvin explores a largely unseen side of queer sexuality by showing how these bachelors used interior design to set themselves apart from the stifling constraints of the hetero-patriarchy that surrounded them.

The Historians of British Art Book Prize recognizes scholarship related to British art and architecture, broadly conceived in terms of place and time.

Potvin's latest book, Oriental Interiors: Design, Identity, Space, an edited volume with Bloomsbury Publishers (London), is now available.


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