CFP/Publication: Gender and Museums

Jim has already sent this 'round to everyone on the Leicester email lists, but in case you missed it...

Gender and Museums

The history of women and museums is long and complex, beginning with the opening of the great European museums in the nineteenth century. As described in visitors’ accounts, novels, and other texts, museums offered some of the few public sites where respectable women could appear. Even as women engaged in spectatorship in the early museums, they found themselves objects of contemplation as the subjects of paintings and sculptures. In the twentieth-century, women became active in museum work, but remained under-represented in the ranks of curators and museum administrators. In contrast, while individuals who are gay, lesbian, or bisexual have gained prominence as museum employees, their lives and experiences have generally been invisible in history and art museum exhibits.

With these circumstances in mind, I am collecting articles for a reader on gender in museums. Topics to be covered include (but are not limited to): representations of gays and lesbians in historic sites; careers for women in museums; gender and collecting; museum definitions of sex and gender; women’s museums; museums’ representations of rape and other forms of gendered violence; exhibits on sexuality; women in museum education; gender and museum audiences; museum exhibits on human reproduction. Preference will be given to articles combining a theoretical perspective with examples from US institutions. Articles focusing solely on representations of women in art works will not be accepted because of the abundance of published scholarship on this topic.

While a number of published articles and several books focus on women in museums, there has been no recent anthology on this topic, so current research remains scattered. Moreover, no book has concentrated on issues of sexual orientation in museums. I therefore plan to gather outstanding articles published in the past ten years as well as new essays focusing on these topics. Articles should be written for an audience of scholars and advanced students.

Please send submissions to Dr. Amy K. Levin, Director, Women’s Studies, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL 60115, USA. Phone: 815 753 1038. Email: alevin@niu.edu. Articles must be submitted in MS Word format, either through email or on CDs. Deadline: April 15, 2008.

Comments

Unknown said…
On this note (tangentially) have you seen this? Part of a series about items in British collections of particular relevance to women: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/04/2008_02_fri.shtml
The Attic said…
I just went to have a look, and the page has disappeared from the website. Shame. :(
Unknown said…
Odd - I just checked and it still worked for me. Here's the link to another of the programmes, this time about the Wellcome collection: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/05/2008_02_wed.shtml

Popular Posts