2017 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities

June 01 - 04, 2017

This panel examines issues of representation and iconography across time and space. Two papers address issues of iconography: In the first, how did Lucy Parke, the wife of a planter, use a protrait to create a particular representation of herself which asserted her sexuality and allowed her to claim power. The second examines the pin-up of World War II, to assert that the gaze of the soldier upon the pin up was like that of their reverance for the Virgin Mary. During the war women’s bodies as represented in the pin-up were "vessels for men’s symbols, metaphors, and ideas." The third paper focuses on the 19th century Afro-Brazilian commemorations of the festival of Our Lady of the Rosary. Here celebrants adorned themselves with the symbols of their West Central African heritage to perform the cultural fusion they lived in Sao Paolo. All three papers point to the importance of the female body as an icon.