Re-framing Representations of Women: Figuring, Fashioning, Portraiting and Telling in the 'Picturing' Women Project

by Susan Shifrin (Editor)

Overview

Crossing disciplinary and chronological boundaries, this volume integrates text and image, essays and object pages to explore the processes inherent in gender representation, rather than resituating women in particular categories or spheres as other scholarly publications and exhibitions have done. Taking its lead from the 'Picturing' Women project on which it reflects and builds, the volume makes a substantial methodological contribution to the analysis of gender discourse and visuality. It offers new and stimulating scholarship that confronts historical patterns of representation that have defined what women were and are seen to be, and presents new contexts for unveiling what art historian Linda Nochlin has called the 'mixed messages' of representations of women.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780754660774
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	10/19/2008
Edition description:	1
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	8.90(w) x 11.10(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Susan Shifrin is Associate Director for Education at the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art and Assistant Professor of Art History at Ursinus College, USA.

Table of Contents

Contents: Preface; Part I Picturing: Object pages: picturing; Who's in the picture? A introduction to 'picturing' women, Susan Shifrin. Part II Figuring: Object pages: figuring; Essay: Figuring the female body; Maudelle Bass: a model body, Carla Williams; Figuring as flora; Figuring the national body; Collections essay: Bryn Mawr College suffragette pageants and parades: fashioning a central and socially integrated identity, Marianne Hansen. Part III Fashioning: Object pages: fashioning; Fashioning female identity; Fashioning the female body; Fashioning national character; Essay:Sleeves, purses, spindles: fashioning women in Cesare Vecellio's costume books, Ann Rosalind Jones; Fashioning the 2 faces of Eve: the mask of beauty and fickle fraud; Fashioning woman; Essay: Felt pictures: the phenomenological fabric of Alison Watt's Shift paintings, Kristin Swan. Part IV Portraiting: Object pages: portraiting; Portraiting conventions; Collections essay: Library Company of Philadelphia. Representative portraits of American women writers from the collections of the Library Company of Philadelphia, to which is appended a preliminary checklist, Cornelia King; Types and beauties series; Essay: Not-beautiful: a counter-theme in the history of women's portraiture, Susan Sidlauskas; Essay: Nationalism, lipstick, and kitchen knives: representations of power and society in the case of Vazirani, Alexandra Halkias. Part V Telling: Object pages: telling; Essay: 'Who told you that lie?': picturing Connie Boswell, Laurie Stras; Essay 'Red robe: short story': an interview with Merrill Mason, Kelly Mitchell and Merrill Mason, edited by Susan Shifrin; Bibliography; Indexes.

Editorial Reviews

'Re-Framing Representations of Women is nothing short of exhilarating - a cultural collaboration on a grand scale among scholars, artists, curators, and storytellers. The feminist images and essays assembled by editor Susan Shifrin provide the most comprehensive and nuanced picture to date of women in art, literature, fashion history, and material culture.' Wendy Steiner, University of Pennsylvania, USA

'Re-Framing Representations of Women is an exciting collection of pictures and texts that encourages critical thinking about gender in our visual world. This ambitious multimedia project examines medical engravings, advertisements and material culture from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and responses to these images in contemporary art to stimulate viewers' understanding of how ideas about women have been constructed and disseminated. It provides an engaging transnational journey for readers to explore the representations of gender in the past and imagine the paths to be created for the future.' Bridget Cooks, University of California, Irvine, USA

’...thoughtfully designed and well-illustrated volume... Recommended.’ Choice

’This is a physically sumptuous book, beautifully designed with a high quality of image reproduction and a work that offers a significant contribution to existing debates around this issue in a lively and accessible manner.’ Gender and History

From the Publisher