American University

Keynote Speakers : Joan Breton Connelly Professor of Classics, New York University / Dorothy Price, FBA Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art and Critical Race Art History, Courtauld Institute of Art

We invite established and emerging scholars of art history as well as advanced graduate students to submit proposals for the 9th Feminist Art History Conference at American University in Washington, D.C.

In the spirit of feminist practice, this is an open call for papers that may address any time period (ancient to contemporary), region, and issue relevant to the ways in which gendered ideologies have shaped the visual arts and their study. We especially welcome submissions that are inclusive, intersectional, and/or interdisciplinary in topic or approach and are eager to see the keynote speakers’ subfields well represented.

Topics may include (but are not limited to) artists, movements, works of art and architecture; cultural institutions and critical discourses; practices of collecting, patronage, and display; the historiography of feminist art history; the gendering of objects, spaces, and media; the reception of images; and issues of power, agency, gender, and sexuality within visual and material cultures.

Proposals due by 15 December 2024

How to Submit

To be considered for participation: in a single Word document, please provide:

1. a single-spaced abstract of up to 500 words for a 20-minute presentation of unpublished work
2. a cv of no more than two pages, and
3. an image, with accompanying caption, representative of your talk.

Please name the document “[last name]-proposal” and submit with the subject line “[last name]-proposal” to FAHC@american.edu. Invitations to participate will be sent in February 2025.

Mission Statement

The Feminist Art History Conference fosters intersectional and interdisciplinary scholarship on the ways in which gender and sexuality have shaped the visual arts and their study–with a conference program designed to advance new research on topics from the ancient past through the present and across the globe. It provides a forum for participants to examine the roles that art and its agents have played in informing and resisting historical and contemporary inequities. Through this forum, the Conference aims to model a more inclusive art history and scholarly community.

The Feminist Art History Conference was established in 2010 to celebrate and build on the feminist art-historical scholarship and pedagogy of Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard, Professors Emeriti at American University. It is sponsored by the Art History Program in the Art Department, College of Arts and Sciences, at American University, with the generous support of Robin D’Alessandro and Dr. Jane Fortune.