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Examine the gender bias of art history and its consequences for the representation of women artists and the interpretation of their work
Assessment Strategies
Discussion, quiz and exam, blog, written product
Criteria
Define foundational terms for the discussion of gender in art history
Determine influence of gender on conditions of production of art
Determine influence of gender on conditions of production of art through art history
Examine art history as a constructed narrative privy to ideology
Identify alternative construction and readings of art history
Become familiar with ideological categories of male and female in art history
Recognize how race, ethnicity, and class intersect with gender to shape which artists are included or excluded from the art historical canon
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Determine the influence of Christian theology on notions of gender in the Middle Ages
Assessment Strategies
Discussion, quiz and exam, blog
Criteria
Discuss the context of artistic production in the Middle Ages
Examine a case study: Hildegard of Bingen
Summarize Hildegard of Bingen’s life, vocation, and creative output
Examine gendered power structures in place during Hildegard of Bingen’s lifetime
Analyze Hildegard of Bingen’s strategies of subversion to overcome gender asymmetry
Discuss power imbalances and subversive strategies as they relate to Hildegard of Bingen
Discuss new insights in contemporary context
Consider how racial and religious hierarchies within medieval Christianity shaped access to education, artistic production, and spiritual authority for women of different backgrounds
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Determine gendered notions of artistic creation in Italian Renaissance
Assessment Strategies
Discussion, quiz and exam, blog, written product
Criteria
Examine the general conditions of artistic production in Italian Renaissance
Discuss notions of gender regarding artistic creation during Italian Renaissance
Identify female artists from the Italian Renaissance, with a focus on Artemisia Gentileschi’s work and life
Recognize popular motifs for paintings, including Susanna and the Elders and Judith and Holofernes
Examine the dependence of art historical interpretations of such works depending on the gender of the artist
Examine the art historical reception and analysis of Artemisia Gentileschi’s work
Examine the projection of modern concepts on psychology and gender in the interpretation of these works
Discuss the influence of biography regarding the gendered interpretation of these works
Discuss new insights in a contemporary context
Acknowledge how the Italian Renaissance canon centers white European women, and consider the experiences of artists from colonized or marginalized racial and ethnic communities during this period
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Explore new definitions of sex and gender introduced in 18th and 19th century France and England
Assessment Strategies
Discussion, quiz and exam, blog
Criteria
Introduce Enlightenment notions of male vs. female and culture vs. nature according to Rousseau and others
Explore the continued idealization of women as mothers and domestic beings as part of the progressive bourgeois ideology of the time
Analyze Victorian notions on female sexuality and its consequences for “adequate” gendered behavior
Examine the impact on gendered ideas of “adequate” artistic production for women
Discuss the emergence of the institutionalized differentiation between professional and amateur artists in context with the newly established Academies
Identify female artists of the time, including Elisabeth-Louise Vigée-Lebrun, Angelika Kauffmann, and Rosa Bonheur
Recognize Rosa Bonheur as an early pioneer in gender fluidity in life and art
Examine how Enlightenment and Victorian ideals of femininity were shaped by and applied differently across racial lines, including the treatment of Black and colonized women in European visual and scientific culture
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Examine the organization of gender, space, and labor in Impressionist painting
Assessment Strategies
Discussion, quiz and exam, blog
Criteria
Explain the historical context of Paris as a re-organized, modern urban space
Identify Beaudelaire and the flâneur
Discuss urban spaces represented in Impressionist painting and their different accessibility for the sexes
Examine the directionality of the gaze in these paintings
Examine the correlation between sex, class, and labor in these spaces: female working class labor produces bourgeois male leisure
Discuss the work of Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot in this context
Analyze how race and colonial labor are largely rendered invisible in Impressionist depictions of modern leisure, and discuss how this absence is itself an ideological act
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Analyze the gender politics of the nude in Western art history
Assessment Strategies
Discussion, quiz and exam, blog
Criteria
Examine the nude as a gendered entity throughout history: from idealized male in ancient Greece to sexualized female in early modern painting
Discuss the history of the tradition of drawing from the nude
Specify who was excluded from life-drawing classes and rationalize their exclusion in its historical context
Correlate exclusions from life-drawing classes to a point in history
Differentiate between the terms “naked” and “nude”
Examine Gauguin and the relationship between the nude, the naked, the gaze, primitivism and the “noble savage”, colonialism, and race
• Examine how the bodies of Black and Indigenous women were specifically exoticized, objectified, and pathologized within Western art history, using examples such as the representation of the "Hottentot Venus"
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Examine Georgia O’Keeffe’s work and its reception as relating to notions of essentialism
Assessment Strategies
Discussion, blog, written product
Criteria
Discuss O’Keeffe’s work and its context in the circle around Alfred Stieglitz in early 20th New York
Examine the relationship between O’Keeffe and Stieglitz as her promoter and supporter
Study her enlarged flower paintings
Analyze the essentializing and sexualizing critical reception of this work
Discuss O’Keeffe’s counterstrategy of oscillating between figuration and abstraction, as well as her claim of “objective” painting
Examine O’Keeffe’s reception by 1970s feminists and its problematic silencing of the artist herself
Examine how O’Keeffe marginalized Indigenous identity and artists through exclusionary practices and her formalist vision
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Determine ascribed gender roles in Surrealism
Assessment Strategies
Discussion, blog, written product
Criteria
Summarize the basic principles of Freudian psychoanalysis: ego-super-ego-id, conscious-subconscious-unconscious, and dream analysis
Compare basic principles of Surrealism to Freudian psychoanalysis
Critique the Second Surrealist Manifesto by André Breton
Discuss women as symbol vs. women as psychological experience in Surrealist art by male and female artists
Discuss female Surrealist artists, such as Leonora Carrington, Dorothea Tanning, Meret Oppenheim, Claude Cahun, or Frida Kahlo
If choosing Claude Cahun, discuss aspects of gender in her work
If choosing Frida Kahlo, discuss her relationship with Surrealism, as well as the native and political Symbology in her work
Examine how Frida Kahlo's Indigenous Mexican identity and engagement with postcolonial politics challenged the Eurocentric assumptions of the Surrealist movement
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Explore the history of modern abstract art and its relationship to gender
Assessment Strategies
Discussion, blog, written product
Criteria
Outline a rough history of abstract art starting with early 20th century abstraction
Examine abstract arts relationship to traditions of craft
Discuss gendered notions of rationality and sensuality in relation to the history of abstract art
Analyze Abstract Expressionism and its masculinist rhetoric
Introduce women artists associated with Abstract Expressionists, including Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler, and Agnes Martin
Examine the critical discourse on Helen Frankenthaler’s work as compared to Jackson Pollock’s work
Draw conclusions on different critical reception of male and female artists in High Modernism
Discuss how Abstract Expressionism's predominantly white critical framework marginalized artists and examine how race shaped access to galleries, critics, and institutional recognition
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Analyze the main principles and proponents of 1970s feminist art
Assessment Strategies
Discussion, blog, written product, presentation
Criteria
Examine feminist art in the United States and Europe between late 1960s and late 1970s
Differentiate between women artists and feminist art
Discuss artists such as Judy Chicago, Carolee Schneeman, Hannah Wilke, Lynda Benglis, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Yoko Ono, Ana Mendieta, Adrian Piper, Valie Export, Gina Pane, Alice Neel, Faith Ringgold, Betye Saar, Mary Kelly, Martha Wilson, Martha Rosler, Joan Jonas, Susan Lacy, WWA, and Las Mujeres Muralistas
Examine common traits and relevant differences between the work of these artists
Synthesize insights on 1970s feminism through discussion and writing
Discuss the problem of essentialism in some of 1970s feminism; make the connection to Georgia O’Keeffe’s reception by 1970s feminist artists
Examine the internal racial tensions of second-wave feminism, particularly how artists such as Faith Ringgold, Betye Saar, and Ana Mendieta challenged a movement that often centered the experiences of white women
Discuss how Chicana, Black, and Asian American feminist artists developed parallel and sometimes intersecting movements that addressed race, class, and gender simultaneously
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Examine the postmodern notion of performativity in queer theory and its implications for the visual arts
Assessment Strategies
Discussion, blog, written product
Criteria
Explain the basic tenets of postmodern theory regarding the questioning of authenticity and fixed identity
Characterize the notions of appropriation and pastiche
Identify the basic tenets of queer theory regarding notions of performativity as discussed by Judith Butler
Examine Appropriation Art as practiced by Cindy Sherman and Yasumasa Morimura
Explore the importance of performativity and queer theory for contemporary art today
Compare and contrast postmodern notions of performativity with 1970s feminist art aspects of essentialism, authorship, originality, and identity, especially regarding gender and race
Discuss how artists have used performativity to address the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality, including work by Adrian Piper, Coco Fusco, and Wu Tsang
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Examine the postcolonial and transnational discussion of race and and its application to the visual arts
Assessment Strategies
Discussion, blog, written product
Criteria
Discuss the U.S.-American context of racial subjugation and its consequence in visual culture using Bell Hooks’ writing on the oppositional gaze
Analyze stereotypical imagery of black womanhood in the United States and its critical usage by black women artists such as Betye Saar, Carrie Mae Weems, Kara Walker, and Wangechi Mutu
Evaluate gaze, power, race, and colonialism in a contemporary context using Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gomez-Peña’s cage performance
Explore individual artists working on issues of postcolonial and transnational feminism
Synthesize common goals of feminism, postcolonialism, and transnationalism as they relate to visual art
Introduce intersectionality as a theoretical framework, drawing on the foundational work of Kimberlé Crenshaw, and apply it to the analysis of art made by women
Examine how Indigenous women artists address land, sovereignty, and decolonization alongside gender in their visual practice
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Examine the role of institutions, curational practices, and institutional critique on the visibility of feminist art
Assessment Strategies
Discussion, blog, written product
Criteria
Analyze the role of the museum as a canonizing institution
Examine the work of the Guerilla Girls
Discuss current statistics on the representation of women artists in art institutions
Examine the role of feminist curating using the examples of WACK! and Global Feminisms
Examine the role of feminist curating or the lack thereof in major international art events using examples such as the Venice Biennale and the Whitney Bienniale
Discuss current statistics on the representation of women artists in art institutions specifically, and examine how race compounds gender-based exclusion from museum collections and exhibitions
Examine recent curatorial efforts to center intersectionality, such as exhibitions focused on Black women artists, Latina artists, and Indigenous artists, and assess their impact on broadening the feminist art canon