ARTH 392 Gender Issues in Art and Art History: The Personal and the Political in Womxn Art

• Mondays, 2:45-5:30 pm
• Instructor: Varda Nisar

As a survey course, we will be taking a thematic approach to understand how womxn artists and cultural producers have responded to different issues and concerns. These concerns vary from the personal to the political, bringing in voices from different regions and geographical locations, including South Asia, Africa, Latin America, and North America. The course understands these diverse practices as emerging from a personal position and experiences that are then given an artistic form and vocabulary which has the potential of connecting with a broad public.  

Under consideration will be artworks, posters, prints and broad body of work that are both produced by womxn artists and provides us insights into the discourses that women were challenging.  

Some of the themes that we would be examining include Indigeneity, Nation-building, Resistance & Protest Art, Conceptual & Land Art, Care & Mothering, countering misogyny, diaspora. As such, taking a thematic approach allows for us to understand both the issues and the response to them within the social-political-regional-cultural context from which they emerge. Some of the artists under consideration will then include, Amrita Sher-Gill, Carrie Mae Williams, Faith Ringgold, Lala Rukh, Nadia Myre, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Rebecca Belmore, Shazia Sikander, Shireen Neshat, Wangechi Mutu, Zarina Hashmi. Some of the collectives under consideration will include A.I.R Gallery (New York), The Woman’s Building (Los Angeles), Karachi LaJamia, Guerrilla Girls.