How Houses Move Us: Atmospheric Practices in The Professor’s House (1925)

Abstract

Abstract This article explores the representation of lived life in the house in Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House (1925). It uncovers how the house moves bodies and affects moods that create individual meaning but also reflect broader responses to modernity. The article argues, in line with recent architectural scholarship, that literature, especially “middlebrow” fiction that would reach a large audience, is productive for understanding atmospheres. Using Bille and Simonsen (2021) concept of “atmospheric practices” as a key theoretical framing, the article shows how interactions with the house are deeply dependent on moods (such as anxiety, curiosity, nostalgia), and that practices performed in and with the house (walking down the stairs, sitting working, opening windows etc.) transmit affects that, in turn, determines the body’s movement.