American University

Keynote Speakers: 

Nikki A. Greene, Associate Professor, Wellesley College

Sherry Lindquist, Professor, Western Illinois University 

We invite established and emerging scholars of art history as well as advanced graduate students to submit proposals for the eighth iteration of the Feminist Art History Conference. 

In the spirit of feminist practice, this is an open call for papers that may address any historical 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. 

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. 

Following the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in summer 2022, amidst the threats against LGBTQ+ lives, marriages, and families, and the continued infringement on related rights around the world, we hope the conference can provide a place to address how and why art and culture have historically served as a site of agency and resistance. 

The conference will assume a hybrid format. Most panels will be online, with select events–including the keynotes–taking place in person in Washington, D.C. 

Proposals due by 1 December 2022. To be considered for participation, please provide (in a single Word document) a single-spaced proposal of up to 500 words for a 20-minute presentation of unpublished work, followed by a cv of no more than two pages. 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 by February 2023. 

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 in Washington, D.C. 

2023 Organizing Committee: Joanne Allen, Juliet Bellow, Norma Broude, Kim Butler Wingfield, Nika Elder, Mary D. Garrard, Tiffany Hunt, Andrea Pearson, Ying-chen Peng, and Andrew Wasserman. 

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.