Call for Papers | Re-Evaluation in Feminism and Contemporary Art

Middlesex University
Conference: Friday 13 September 2024, 11:00–18:00 BST
Deadline to apply: Thursday 20 June 2024

Create/Feminisms at Middlesex University announce a call for papers for their forthcoming September conference on the theme of “Re-Evaluation in Feminism and Contemporary Art”.

What do we mean by Re-Evaluation?

It could be said all new research contains a “re-evaluation” of past work, but this conference aims to re-evaluate feminist research and enquiry as it has developed over the last 50 years in relation to different local/global dynamics or about certain artists or artworks.

Feminism(s) aim to interrogate existing histories and provide significant corrections to what constitutes “history”. 

There are many feminism(s), and many generations of feminist scholars, but the definition we intend here is based in politics, not identity. The conference aims to explore different strategies that have been attempted, while offering critique and fresh assessments. We encourage many different voices and perspectives on feminist politics in relation to contemporary art from many parts of the world to apply, as well as diverse and different perspectives of critics, artists, curators and researchers.

We encourage papers about feminism and contemporary art that consider (but are not limited to) questions such as:    

1. How has the detailed archival and revisionist work generated by feminists been used or redeployed in biography, in exhibition-making and has it produced accounts or practices that challenge rather than reiterate stereotypes?  
2. What is the result of always contrasting what happened in the 1970s to today: a trope about foundations and originality that has continued to function in feminist art and its histories in every decade since the 1970s. What might be the effects of contrasting other moments in history to today?  
3. How do national identifications continue to be redeployed in feminist internationalisms or the global contemporary: as a historical/theoretical location or a reinforcement of narrations about national histories?  
4. How straightforward is the link between critical re-evaluation and the transformation of reputations of only “marginalized” women artists; what happens to the few who receive market success?  
5. Are there contradictory effects, locally, transnationally and globally for feminism(s)?  
6. Do re-evaluations reinforce or challenge the association of some women artists with exceptionalism, exoticism, marginalised identities, cultural difference or Otherness?  

We want to encourage papers that ask critical questions about how the divergent politics of feminism(s) both inform and have transformed the practices of art history and artists and those that ask whether feminism(s) themselves are in need of re-evaluation.

We welcome papers that explore local and transnational receptions of works; offer reflections on intersectionality; consider discrimination in relation to sexism, racism, ableism, homophobia and classism; rethink legacies of colonialism; present or critique indigenous perspectives; question different feminist practices in exhibition-making; and discuss how women artists are affected by the contradictions and successes in re-evaluations of their work.  We want to encourage papers which offer new research that is critical, insightful and even polemical. 

This event is supported by Middlesex University’s ACI Faculty Research Funds.

Unwaged participants in the UK can apply for train fares (within UK) to support attendance. Please indicate if you need this support as it is limited. Students are encouraged to apply to their own University first for support to attend.

How to submit

Please email a 300 word abstract of your paper and two sentences about yourself to [email protected] by Thursday 20 June 2024.

Speakers from different parts of the world can present online, rather than in person. Please state whether you can only give your paper online or are able to attend in person on 13 September 2024.

All papers which are not programmed into the panels will be offered the chance to present a digital or physical poster. We also aim to develop the presentations into a book at a future date, as we have done in previous Create/Feminisms events, e.g. Feminist Art Activisms and Artivisms (Valiz, 2020) and De-/Anti-/Post-Colonial Feminisms in Contemporary Art and Textile Crafts (KT press, 2023).