Gender, Desire and the Gaze in Early Modern Visual Arts

Catalog description

The course takes a global perspective on gender and sexuality in early modern visual arts. In seminar style, we relate readings to a selection of artworks from Europe, Asia and the Islamic world to think about how early modern visual arts structured erotically charged vectors of looking and being looked at that confirmed, hyperbolized, instrumentalized and even made magic of gender norms. We look at gender play and the regulation of gender in and through the visual arts. The subject of gender before the advent of gender studies offers means to think outside of familiar frames of analysis, and the goal of taking a global perspective is to critique methods that developed primarily in relation to European art. A basic proposition will be that the visual arts have historically been gendered. The hope is to imagine new interpretive horizons.