ARTH 392 Gender Issues in Art and Art History Modernities and Masculinities
- Thursdays, 5:45-8:15 pm
- Instructor: Dr. Vanessa Mackenzie Parent
This course investigates the social and cultural construction of masculinity from the late 18th century to the 1950s through the examination of art and visual culture. Focusing primarily on the Western context though considering multiple modernities, the course interrogates the concretization of a strict gender binary anchored in the proposed physical, intellectual and moral superiority of the male sex, and this against the backdrop of social, political and cultural shifts including the rise of capitalism and collective mythologies of nationhood, industrialization and colonization. Through the analysis of visual materials and close readings of key texts, we will consider the role of gender in the development of social and political phenomena such as revolution and citizenship; imperialisms and coloniality; fascism and the weaponization of male discontent; Cold War politics and homophobia. The course will also look at the challenges presented to narrow models of masculinity within modern art practices. Crucially, this course will unpack the historical conditions that laid the groundwork for the contemporary emergence of hyperbolic gendered subjectivities in the public and virtual sphere.