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Biennial Feminist Art History Conference

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202-885-1670

Fax: 202-885-1132

art@american.edu

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Art 4400 Massachusetts Avenue NW Washington, DC 20016-8004 United States

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Feminist Art History ConferenceAmerican University, Washington, DC
September 29 – October 1, 2023

Online Panels & In-Person/Livestreamed Keynotes

Keynote Speakers

  • Nikki A. Greene, Associate Professor, Wellesley College
  • Sherry Lindquist, Professor, Western Illinois University

Conference Format

The conference will operate in multiple modalities:

  • Both keynotes will take place in person at the Katzen Arts Center on the American University campus and will also be livestreamed.
  • All conference papers will be pre-recorded as videos and available to conference registrants starting September 11.
  • The Q&As for all panels will take place on Zoom on Saturday, September 30, and Sunday, October 1.
  • As part of the conference, there are a limited number of spots for an in-person curator-led tour of the Baltimore Museum of Art’s Making Her Mark: A History of Women Artists in Europe, 1400-1800 on Sunday, October 1.

2023 Schedule

Click on a session to jump to full panel details.
Click on a breakout session (ex. Session 1a, Session 2c, etc.) to open the password-protected Zoom link.

Friday, September 29, 2023

4:30 p.m.
Reception (in-person)
6:00 p.m.
Welcome Remarks (in-person and online)
6:30 p.m.
Keynote (in-person and online)
Sherry Lindquist, Western Illinois University: "Hieronymous Bosch's Nudes"

Saturday, September 30, 2023

10–10:50 a.m.
Zoom Social Hour (online)
Social Hour: Meet and Greet
Social Hour: Feminist Publishing in the Arts
11–11:50 
Session 1 (4 simultaneous Q&As; online)
Live Panel Discussion Zoom Links:
Session 1a: Archetypes: Amazons, Caryatids, and Snakes
Session 1b: Nursing and Nationhood
Session 1c: The Power of Community
Session 1d: The Politics of Design
12–1:00
Lunch Break
1–1:50 
Session 2 (4 simultaneous Q&As; online)
Live Panel Discussion Zoom Links:
Session 2a: Courtly Women
Session 2b: The Body Politic
Session 2c: Abstraction as Feminist Strategy
Session 2d: Making Their Way I
2–2:50 
Session 3 (4 simultaneous Q&As; online)
Live Panel Discussion Zoom Links:
Session 3a: Ambiguous Identities
Session 3b: Historical Recovery in Museums
Session 3c: Taking Space: Women, Art, and Architecture
Session 3d: Art as Activism/Activism as Art I
3–3:50 
Zoom Social Hour: A Preview of the Re-Installation of the National Museum of Women in the Arts with curators Virginia Treanor and Orin Zahra (online)
4:00

Keynote (in-person and online)
Nikki Greene, Wellesley College: "Rest: a Pedagogy of Art and Care"

5:15 p.m.
Reception (in-person)

Sunday, October 1, 2023

10:00 a.m.

Making Her Mark:
A History of Women Artists in Europe, 1400-1800

Special guided curatorial tour in person at Baltimore Museum of Art

12–12:50 
Session 4: Rethinking Art-Historical Time (online)
12–12:50 
Session 5 (3 simultaneous Q&As; online)
Live Panel Discussion Zoom Links:
Session 5a: Group Exhibitions of Women-Identified Artists: Past and Present
Session 5b: Nature and Culture
Session 5c: Objects & Agency
1–1:50 
Zoom Social Hour (online)

Social Hour: Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality Today
Social Hour: Feminism in Practice

2–2:50 
Session 6 (3 simultaneous Q&As; online)
Live Panel Discussion Zoom Links:
Session 6a: Nineteenth-Century France: New Perspectives
Session 6b: Domestic Labors
Session 6c: Mentorship: Leading by Example
3–3:50/4:50
Session 7 (3 simultaneous Q&As; online)
Live Panel Discussion Zoom Links:
Session 7a: New Horizons: Feminist Art History in South America Now (3–4:50)
Session 7b: Art as Activism/Activism as Art II (3–3:50)
Session 7c: Making Their Way II (3–3:50)

Two conference attendees

2023 Organizing Committee

Joanne Allen, Juliet Bellow, Norma Broude, Kim Butler Wingfield, Nika Elder, Mary D. Garrard, Tiffany Hunt, Andrea Pearson, Ying-chen Peng, and Andrew Wasserman.

Sponsored by the Art History Program in the Art Department, College of Arts and Sciences, at American University, with the generous support of Robin D’Alessandro and Dr. Jane Fortune.

2023 Conference Partners

Getty

Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender

AU's Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program

AU's Antiracist Research and Policy Center

Conference discussion.

Conference Background

The conference builds on the legacy of feminist art-historical scholarship and pedagogy initiated by Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard at American University. With the goal of fostering a broad dialogue on feminist art-historical practice, the event will feature papers spanning a range of chronological, geographic, and intersectional topics.

Previous keynote speakers include  Dorothy Ko, Barnard/Columbia (2021); Amelia Jones, USC (2018); Lisa Gail Collins, Vassar College (2014); Patricia Simons, University of Michigan (2013); Whitney Chadwick, San Francisco State University (2012); Mary Sheriff, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (2011); and Anna Chave, Queens College and the Graduate School, CUNY (2010).

Broude & Garrard Paperback

Introducing Feminist Art History, now available in paperback as well as e-book format, brings together the landmark introductory essays and prefaces written by Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard for their five co-edited volumes on feminism and art history (1982-2005). With a new preface (2014).

Full Panel Details

Session 1

Saturday, September 30
11–11:50 a.m.

  • Moderator: Denva E. Gallant, Rice University
  • Cortney Berg, The City University of New York
    The Morgan Manuscript M.461 Amazons: Dangerous Women in Courtly Guises
  • Tori Burke, Emory University
    A Generation of Vipers: The Physiologus, the Woman-Serpent, and the Viper's Lesson
  • Ella Gonzalez, Johns Hopkins University
    Bearing Weight: Caryatid Mirrors and Women’s Labor in Ancient Greek Art
  • Moderator: Meredith Gamer, Columbia University

  • Jessica M. Dandona, Minneapolis College of Art and Design
    Finis Galliæ: The Peril and the Promise of Mother’s Milk in Henri-Jules-Jean Geoffroy’s La Goutte de Lait de Belleville
  • Shana Klein, Kent State University
    Spoiled Milk: The Anxieties of Motherhood in Victorian Breastfeeding Imagery
  • Gabrielle Patrone, Rhode Island College
    “Nursing the Republic: A Study of Marie Benoist’s Portrait of Madeline”

  • Jutta Sperling, Hampshire College
    “Female Imperial Patronage and Lactation Imagery in Eighteenth-Century Illuminated Ethiopian Manuscripts of the Story of Mary [Nägärä Maryam]
  • Moderator: Orin Zahra, National Museum of Women in the Arts

  • Janine DeFeo, The Graduate Center, City University of New York
    Feminist Networking: The 1980 WCA Conference Debate and Suzanne Lacy’s River Meeting
  • Margo Hobbs, Muhlenberg College
    Lesbian Feminist Photography at the Rootworks Ovulars: Visibility, Pleasure, and Empowerment
  • Danielle Van Wagner, University of Toronto
    Papers of Art and Fantasy: The Collaborative Networks of Parisian Female Decorative Artists
  • Yizhou Wang, Hong Kong Baptist University
    The Politics of Female Alliance through an Orchid Album in Late Imperial China
  • Moderator: Christina Riley, American University

  • Megan Brandow-Faller, City Univeristy of New York, Kingsborough
    Designs on Creativity: Emmy Zweybrück and the Commodification of Child Creativity

  • Miriam Kienle, University of Kentucky
    Feminist Conceptualisms and the Politics of Self-Quantification

  • Elizabeth Koehn, Bard Graduate Center
    Invisible Woman: Cora Scovil’s Lucite Creations and the Case for Historical Recovery

  • Zsofia Valyi-Nagy, Getty Research Institute
    Debunking Genius, Programming Intuition: The Accidental Feminism of Vera Molnar's Computer Graphics

Session 2

Saturday, September 30
1–1:50 p.m.

  • Moderator: Sheila Ffolliott, George Mason University

  • Brianna Cooney, American University
    A Feast for the Senses, A Feast for the Intellect: The Maiolica Patronage of Eleonora Gonzaga
  • Chloé Gourgues, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes Image, Matter, Power - Class and gender representation through the example of coats of arm's bearers in women's seals during the 14th century in France and Flanders
  • Moderator: Tess Korobkhin, University of Maryland

  • Brittany Bailey, Rutgers University
    A Menagerie of Masculinities: Constructing a Typology of the Heroic Male Body in the Paintings and Drawings of Rosa Bonheur
  • Marquita Burke-De Jesus, University of Texas, Dallas
    Dancing towards Liberation: Performance, Race & Somatic Reclamation
  • Vanessa Troiano, The Graduate Center, City University of New York
    Your Gaze Hits her Walking Figure: Susan Weil’s Activation of the Female Nude in Postwar America
  • Moderator: Bibi Obler, George Washington University

  • Isabel Bird, Harvard University
    Sylvia Plimack Mangold’s Rules of Perspective
  • Elissa Watters, University of Southern California
    Imaginary Play: Louisa Chase’s Floor Paintings
  • Ola Wlusek, The John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art

    She didn’t throw away her shot: Gender, Agency, and Resistance in Work by Women Artists from The Ringling’s Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art

  • Moderator: Grace Yasumura, Smithsonian American Art Museum

  • Eliza Butler, Columbia University
    Georgia O’Keeffe, Duncan Phillips, and the Promotion of Women Artists in US Art Museums in the 1920s
  • Caroline Culp, Vassar College
    The Independent Eye of Caroline Clowes: Economies of Animal Painting in the Hudson Valley, 1853-1894
  • Eve Grinstead, École normale supérieure, Paris Sciences et Lettres
    Beyond Women Supporting Women: Sheikhas, Expat Women, and the Rise of the Art Scene in the United Arab Emirates

Session 3

Saturday, September 30
2–2:50 p.m.

  • Moderator: Aneta Georgievska-Shine, University of Maryland 

  • Natacha Aprile, Sorbonne University and EHESS
    Transgressing the norms and performing masculinity: Queen Christina blurring gender roles in her portraits
  • Ilaria Arcangeli, University of Chieti-Pescara
    Roman women painters from the rear between the 16th and 17th centuries
  • Margaret M. Barnes, University of Washington
    “Coheir in the Kingdom and Spouse”: Artemisia Gentileschi’s Madonna and Child as the Heavenly Bride and Bridegroom
  • Moderator: Kayleigh Bryant-Greenwell, American University 

  • Marietta Cambareri, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
    Finding “Hidden Gold” in Museum Collections: Strong Women in Renaissance Italy at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
  • Marissa Hershon, The John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art
    Curatorial Strategies for Presenting Women Artists in Studio Glass
  • Carolyn Russo, Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum
    Challenging A Cultural Narrative: Contemporary Women Artists Embrace Feminism in the Realm of Flight
  • Marisa C. Sánchez, Lycoming College

    Agency, Authorship and the Archive: The Case of Miss A

  • Moderator: Tessa Paneth-Pollack, FAAC (Feminist Art-Architecture Collaborative)

  • Bridget Bartal, Cranbrook Art Museum (Mis)fitting Taliesin: The Women of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin Fellowship

  • Kelsey Gustin, Fine Arts Collection, US General Services Administration
    The Fiber Art Boom of the 1970s: Federal Buildings, Brutalism, and the Art in Architecture Program

  • Marie-Christine Schoel, Westphalian Wilhelm-University Münster
    Judy Chicago’s Minimal Art and the Development of Alternative Spaces in the Feminist Art Movement

  • Amy Von Lintel, West Texas A&M University
    Women Abstract Expressionists and Religious Design between 1960 and 1980

  • Moderator: Andrew Wasserman, American University 

  • Mona Bozorgi, Florida State University
    Shared Photographs as Agentic Data: Collaboration with Women Protesters in Iran
  • Joanna Gardner-Huggett, DePaul University

    Contesting Rape and Demanding Safety: Ilona Granet’s 1977 Performance

    Elizabeth Hawley, University of South Alabama
    Don’t Bump Her: Natani Notah and the Indigenous Feminist Art of Resurgence

Session 4

Sunday, October 1
12–12:50 p.m.

  • Moderator: Eve Straussman-Pflanzer, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

  • Julia Alting, University of Groningen
    Towards a Nonlinear Feminist Art History: The Temporality of Canonization
  • Jennifer Griffiths, Umbra Institute in Perugia
    Arte(misian) Afterlives: Kathleen Gilje, Anna Ostoya, Lili Bernard, and Betty Tompkins
  • Rachel Warriner, Courtauld Institute of Art
    Considering Activist Histories

Session 5

Sunday, October 1
12–12:50 p.m.

  • Moderator: Anne Reeve, Hirshhorn Museum

  • Dorothée Dupuis, National Autonomous University of Mexico
    The Exhibition elles@centrepompidou: the stakes of a "neither feminine nor feminist" approach at the turn of the 2010s
  • Sarah K. Happersberger, International Centre for the Study of Culture
    Exchange as Feminist Strategy: The Exchange Show and other dialogue-based Women’s Art Exhibitions in Conversation
  • Agata Jakubowska, Warsaw University
    Imagined and Real Women's Communities in International All-women Exhibitions
  • Allison Westerfield, University of Florida
    The Legacy of “Women Artists”
  • Moderator: Eleanor Harvey, Smithsonian American Art Museum
  • Anna Dempsey, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth
    Angel De Cora: The Indians’ Book and the Indigenous “Graphic Landscape”
  • Rachael Reynolds,
    Tyler School of Art & Architecture, Temple University
    The Emancipated Female Figure and Reclaimed Feminine Power: Photographs by Anne Brigman, 1911-1913
  • Amanda Malmstrom, Thomas Cole National Historical Site; Kate Menconeri, Thomas Cole National Historical Site; Nancy Siegel, Towson University
    Women Reframe American Landscape: A Curatorial Perspective
  • Astrid Tvetenstrand, Preservation Society of Newport County
    Women in Landscape: Laura Woodward, Henry Flagler, and Property Development
  • Moderator: Elyse Speaks, University of Notre Dame
  • Audrey Florey, University of Missouri, Columbia

    Elsa Ulbricht’s Socially and Artistically Engaged Practices

  • Caitlin Glosser, Kenyon College
    A Cross-Media Collaboration: Sonia Delaunay, Blaise Cendrars, and The First Simultaneous Book

  • Olivia E. Murphy, University of Oklahoma
    From Seer Stones to Seer Bonnets: Angela Ellsworth's Recovering, Reimagining, and Recounting of Mormon Polygamy

Session 6

Sunday, October 1
2–2:50 p.m.

  • Moderator: Juliet Bellow, American University

  • Dani Ezor, Kenyon College
    Making Up White Femininity: Race, Gender, and Materiality at the Toilette Table in the Eighteenth-Century French Empire
  • Melissa Hyde, University of Florida; Paris Spies-Gans, Independent Scholar
    Women Artists and the Nude in the Long Eighteenth-Century: A Matter to Redress
  • Emilie Martin-Neute, Institut Catholique de Paris
    Women artists and French Université Exhibitions : Deconstructing historiographical invisibilisation
  • Carina Rech, Nationalmuseum Stockholm
    The Artist as Flâneuse: Hanna Hirsch-Pauli’s Letters from Paris, 1885-87
  • Moderator: Sarah Gordon, National Museum of African American History and Culture

  • Lexington Davis, University of St Andrews
    The Labor of Refusal: Laundry and Resistance in Betye Saar and Simone Leigh’s Sculptural Work
  • Rebecca DeRoo, Rochester Institute of Technology
    Illuminating Public and Domestic Labor: Mary Kelly’s 1970s Feminist Art Activism
  • Michelle Donnelly, Yale University
    Working "Around the Clock": Ruth Asawa's Impressions of Domesticity
  • Maddy Henkin, Eric Firestone Gallery
    Give Peas a Chance: Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit and the Recipe as Radical Form
  • Moderator: Danielle Mysliwiec, American University 

  • Liz Kim, Texas A&M University-Kingsville

    Hung Liu's Teaching Practice and Postmodernism

    Emilie Oléron Evans, Queen Mary, University of London
    Portrait(s) of the feminist art historian as model, muse and mother: Linda Nochlin

    Amy Rahn, University of Maine, Augusta
    The Fresh Air School: Tracing Joan Mitchell’s Mentorship as Influence

Session 7

Sunday, October 1
3–3:50/4:50 p.m.

Organized by Ayelen Pagnanelli and Lucía Laumann, Centro de Investigaciones en Arte y Patrimonio, Universidad Nacional de San Martin-CONICET

  • Ana Paula Cavalcanti Simioni, Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros da Universidade de São Paulo
    Presenças Invisíveis: artistas latino americanas na coleção do CNAP em tempos de exílio
  • Gloria Cortés, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Chile
    Una Respuesta Entrecruzada: Los estudios feministas en las artes visuales y su panorama actual

  • Georgina Gluzman, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas
    Feminist Readings of the Past in Recent Argentine Art

  • Moderator: Frances Jacobus-Parker, University of Notre Dame

  • Claire Raymond, University of Maine
    Shelley Niro's Mohawk Valley
  • Kimberly Smith, Southwestern University
    Beyond Japonisme: Charlotte Berend-Corinth's Wartime Watercolors
  • Doris Sung, University of Alabama
    Hong Kong Artists’ Feminist Interventions in Civil Disobedience Movements
  • Barbara Tyner, Centro de Cultura Casa Lamm

    Expanding the Timeline of Resistance: The Surprise of Pre-Feminist Feminist Messaging in Mid-Twentieth Century Mexico

  • Moderator: Nancy Micklewright, Smithsonian Institution 

  • Alison McQueen, McMaster University
    Sculptor Noémie Constant in Second Empire Paris: “A Woman who sought to live Honorably from her Work”

  • Nadine Nour el Din, Independent Researcher
    Artist and Muse: Ehsan Mokhtar and Tahia Halim

    Mark N. Taylor, Berry College; Melinda J. Matthews, Georgia State University
    Jewel Woodard Simon (1911–1996): A Black Woman Artist at the Intersection of Race and Gender