The strength of a knitted home: retrieving histories through Janet Morton's wool installations
type: CreativeWork
description: This thesis focuses on the ways in which Janet Morton’s installations explore geographic and architectural spatial arrangements, and the ways in which these arrangements reproduce hierarchies of gender, race, and class. As cultural geographers and architectural historians have argued, and as I argue in the context of Morton’s work, architecture and geography exist in a reciprocal relationship with the social context in which they exist. Consequently, social histories that amass in politicized spaces referred to as “home,” such as gendered suburban houses, urban shelters, segregated neighbourhoods, are often marginalized. By discussing the way Morton’s work alludes to marginalized social and spatial histories within home environments, I demonstrate the ways that mainstream understanding of the subordination of marginalized groups is informed by sociospatial histories.
abstract: This thesis focuses on the ways in which Janet Morton’s installations explore geographic and architectural spatial arrangements, and the ways in which these arrangements reproduce hierarchies of gender, race, and class. As cultural geographers and architectural historians have argued, and as I argue in the context of Morton’s work, architecture and geography exist in a reciprocal relationship with the social context in which they exist. Consequently, social histories that amass in politicized spaces referred to as “home,” such as gendered suburban houses, urban shelters, segregated neighbourhoods, are often marginalized. By discussing the way Morton’s work alludes to marginalized social and spatial histories within home environments, I demonstrate the ways that mainstream understanding of the subordination of marginalized groups is informed by sociospatial histories.
author: Rothwell, Emily Jane
language: eng
keywords: Art, Craft, Social history, Women, Feminism, Artists, Knitting, Architecture, Homeless, Urban cultural geography, Space, Gender
date published: 2007-08-09T19:10:36Z
date modified: 2026-07-27T20:35:39Z
provider: Queens University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Queens University

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/1974/505