'Women Artists?' The Future of Art History and Gender

In 2022, Dobbs v. Jackson overturned the right to abortion, undermining bodily autonomy and privacy. Reproductive care has come continually under attack, as has the rights of free speech and healthcare of homosexual and transgender people. As black feminist and queer scholarship has shown, studies of gender must always be intersectional. How do discourses of intersectionality, sexuality, eroticism, and bodily autonomy shape our understanding of the nexus of art and gender? The long eighteenth century has been a key arena in the historiography of feminist art history, studies of gender, and research on women artists. This panel aims to ask a following question: “Why study ‘women artists’?” What are the productivities and shortcomings of a term like ‘women artists’ in 2024, and what is the future of art history and gender?

This panel invites papers that explore the stakes, methodologies, limitations, and promises of research on gender and art history. Papers could focus on new approaches to study of (an) individual artist(s), analysis of images that complicate gender binaries, the gendering of materials, investigations of masculinity or femininity, concepts of the queer and queering, or a take a historiographical approach, amongst others. This panel welcomes papers that nuance gender as an identity, theoretical category, and methodological approach. The format of the panel will consist of three or four 15-minute presentations followed by Q&A that I hope will provoke a robust discussion. Kindly email sarahlund@g.harvard.edu with any questions.