Main content

Stuffed Crocodiles and the Chrysler Building

Episode 6 of 10

What do student bedrooms in 1896 and 2016 reveal about female student identity and behaviour, then and now? Recent graduate Ellie Cawthorne investigates.

Royal Holloway College 1896 and 2016. What does the choice of interior design of a student bedroom there reveal about who the students are and how they behave? Or were supposed to behave?

Presenter Ellie Cawthorne examines a remarkable set of nineteenth century photographs of student study rooms with college archivist Annabel Valentine, and visits some of the students living in exactly the same study rooms in the 21st century.

She discovers how fears of female education and emancipation affected the design of student living quarters, and how students past and present transformed their private living quarters into public display spaces.

Hand made lightshades, Japanese fans, taxidermy, generic posters of Pulp Fiction and the New York Skyline, the student bedroom was - and still is - the canvas for generations of students to construct and communicate their new student identities.

Producer: Lucy Dichmont
Series Producer: Nick Baker
A Testbed production for 成人快手 Radio 4.

Available now

15 minutes

Last on

Mon 25 Apr 2016 13:45

Broadcast

  • Mon 25 Apr 2016 13:45