Bodies of Work: New Materialist Feminisms in Contemporary Art

Catalog description

How does meaning materialize in both art and feminist theory? How might we understand the body (and gender) anew through materialist art practices? This course will trace the historical positioning of feminist theory within the development of new materialist feminism: an interdisciplinary body of theory and practice about the ways that we come to know the body as a material force in relation to others. Across this field, the work of art mediates, interjects and performs discursive gestures which explore gender as a concept that need not keep materiality at arm's length. Mapping these genealogies from the 1970s to the present through constructionist approaches to gender, their intersectional critiques, and new materialist approaches to theories of colonization, we will explore what constitutes the material of gender theory and how feminism has both utilized and spoken back to Marxism, poststructuralism, ecological feminism, and psychoanalysis. We will read work by theorists including Judith Butler, Elizabeth Grosz, Tiffany Lethabo King, and Julietta Singh and consider artworks by Rebecca Belmore, Mary Kelly, Adrian Piper, Cecilia Vicuña, and others. Throughout, we will pay close attention to the theoretical and political conundrums that continue to make feminist theory an animated and animating practice in both art and philosophy.