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Images of women are pervasive and complex within the visual landscape. While representations of "decent," "modal" women often reinforce the aesthetic and moral ideals of patriarchal societies, images of "dangerous" women resist being merely cast as oppositional. They are not simply “anything but good.” As Mary Garrard argues in her essay “Why Are These Women Dangerous?”, such depictions evoke anxieties about female power—particularly the power women may hold over men. Artists have historically responded to this fear by neutralizing these figures, transforming them into passive, eroticized subjects—an especially common trope in biblical and mythological narratives.

Building on recent scholarship in Western art history, this panel seeks to extend these conversations into Asian visual contexts, both historical and modern, where depictions of transgressive or “dangerous” women appear across a wide range of media: from didactic and literary paintings to illustrated newspapers, tabloids, and consumer visual culture. These figures provoke key questions: Why were these images created? Who were they meant to be seen by? How does the gendered gaze shape their meaning, reception, or reinterpretation? Could a woman artist reclaim or reframe the “dangerous” woman through her own visual language?

We invite papers that explore the intersectional dimensions of female representation in Asian art, particularly where those images reflect cultural fears, fantasies, or desires around women who transgress religious, social, or moral boundaries.