ARTH 640 Photography History and Theory: Feminist Histories of Photography

• Dr. Julia Skelly

Drawing on the work of photography scholars such as Abigail Solomon-Godeau and Shawn Michelle Smith, we will discuss a range of male, female and nonbinary photographers from an intersectional feminist perspective, considering not just gender but also race, class and sexuality. The course will cover nineteenth-century ethnographic photographs, critically examined through the lens of Indigenous feminism, as well as white feminist photographers such as Hannah Wilke and Cindy Sherman. Turning to the more recent past, we will read scholarship on Black female photographers Carrie Mae Weems and Nona Faustine, among others, and Black nonbinary photographer Zanele Muholi, who had a major retrospective at the Tate Modern in 2024. Readings will include scholarship that takes a queer feminist approach to photography, as well as feminist scholarship on female photographers in Mexico, both historical and contemporary.