080040 SE Seminar: Expanding Art History: Writing about Female Artists, Performing a Feminist Critique (2018W)

This course examines the methods, histories, and theories through which the diverse artistic practices of female artists can be researched, analyzed, and written about in a global context. It seeks to expand the canon(s) of art history from modernism to the present and investigate the mechanisms through which inclusion and exclusion of female artists has been and continues to be regulated. Drawing on a broad spectrum of perspectives, including gender studies, critical ethnic studies, media-studies, and post colonialism studies, we will: 1) interrogate how dominant art historical frameworks, narratives and methodologies structure our knowledge of specific art objects and practices, exhibitionary models, and social subjects; 2) examine practices that perform critical interventions, resistance to and re-framings of art historical frameworks, narratives, and methodologies; 3) explore the global connections between art history, artistic and curatorial practices, museology and the formation of ‘gendered’ identity and political and economic inequalities ; 4) grapples with the need to shape renewed imaginations, practices, and methodologies towards diverse ways of knowing and collective change.

Course Aims: The aims of the course are to 1) familiarize students with the practices female artists in a contemporary global context and expand the histories and theories through which they have been included / excluded within the canon of art history; 2) engage with the issues raised by these practices along multidisciplinary pathways, including critical ethnic studies, indigenous studies, gender studies, post colonial studies 3) introduce students to methods, models, and theories for the critical analysis of contemporary art.

Course Methods: This is a conceptually and theoretically driven seminar that approaches the study of contemporary art as an expanded and entwined constellation of representational artifacts, discursive objects, and material practices. Within this multidisciplinary constellation, we will be attentive to the ways in which artistic production relates and responds to forces, techniques, and effects of power and is implicated in the constitution of new subjectivities.
Specific pedagogical methods include: Close textual and visual analysis; class discussions, oral and written components, field trips.