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Scenes from Student Life

Scenes from Student Life: Episode 6: Stuffed Crocodiles and the Chrysler Building

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Episode 6

Episode 6: Stuffed Crocodiles and the Chrysler Building

Stuffed Crocodiles and the Chrysler Building

BBC Radio 4 - Scenes from Student Life, Stuffed Crocodiles and the Chrysler Building

What do female students' bedrooms in 1896 and 2016 say about their lives?

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 BBC Radio 4.

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Recent graduate Ellie Cawthorne explores 900 years of student life.

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Episode 6: Stuffed Crocodiles and the Chrysler Building

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