New Geographies of Feminist Art: China, Asia, and the World

By Sasha Welland | Published: May 23, 2012

Sonal Khullar, Assistant Professor of Art History, and I received a grant from the American Council of Learned Societies, funded by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange, to support an international conference.

Nilima Sheikh, Traffic on the China India Highway, 2007

New Geographies of Feminist Art: China Asia, and the World

November 15-17, 2012
University of Washington

With panels and roundtables featuring scholars, artists, and curators, this international conference reconsiders the practice, circulation, and cross-cultural significance of feminist art from Asia.

Keynote speaker: Shu-mei Shih (Comparative Literature, Asian Languages & Cultures, and Asian American Studies, University of California, Los Angeles)

Sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies, funded by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange; the Simpson Center for the Humanities at the University of Washington; the University of Washington College of Arts & Sciences; the Henry Art Gallery; Seattle Art Museum; and the Gardner Center for Asian Art and Ideas of the Seattle Art Museum.

More information soon at www.simpsoncenter.org/new-geographies.

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GWSS 290: Feminist Art and Visual Culture in a Global Perspective

By Sasha Welland | Published: May 23, 2012

I will be teaching this new course in Autumn 2012. I hope that it will be a regular 200-level course in Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies, but for this first time out it is a special topics offering. In this inaugural year, it gives students a unique opportunity to explore feminist art and the multiple contexts of its creation and circulation through an exciting series of events at UW and in the community, at the Seattle Art Museum, Henry Art Gallery, Seattle Public Library, and Seattle International Film Festival. Please help spread the word so that the course will be fully enrolled and offered in years to come!

Feminist Art and Visual Culture in a Global Perspective
GWSS 290 Special Topics in Women Studies
Fall 2012, M-Th 11:30-12:20
Download Flyer 


While women artists around the world have reinvented art-making practices and challenged conventional understandings of culture and society, the story of feminist art presented in major museums and exhibits has centered on Euro-American artists, artworks, and movements. This course explores how feminist artistic production poses questions about power, gender, and sexuality, while offering a global feminist art history grounded in centers like Mumbai, Beijing, and Johannesburg. It aims to introduce students to the rich and varied range of contemporary feminist art practice and theory and to examine the local and global contexts—aesthetic and sociocultural—that have shaped it across diverse locations. Artists covered will include figures such as He Chengyao, Kim Sooja, Yayoi Kusama, Meera Mukherjee, Shirin Neshat, and Tracey Rose.

The course is organized in conjunction with an international conference, New Geographies of Feminist Art: China, Asia, and the World, which will be held at the University of Washington in November. It is timed to coincide with Elles, a major exhibit of feminist art originally installed at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, which will be at the Seattle Art Museum from October 2012 to January 2013. Combining scholarly presentations with artists’ and curators’ roundtables, this conference addresses the practice, circulation, and cross-cultural significance of contemporary feminist art from Asia.

GWSS 290 incorporates, as part of the course structure, visits to local museums, guided gallery tours, and talks by important visiting scholars and artists, including Hung Liu (San Francisco), Wu Mali (Taiwan), Navjot (India), and Zanele Muholi (South Africa). It offers students a unique opportunity to explore feminist art and the multiple contexts of its creation and circulation through an exciting series of events at UW and in the community, at the Seattle Art Museum, Henry Art Gallery, Seattle Public Library, and Seattle International Film Festival.

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Welcome to Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies!

By Sasha Welland | Published: March 2, 2011

On March 1, 2011, the first day of Women’s History Month, the University of Washington Women Studies Department officially became the Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies Department! Our PhD program will also soon undergo a name change to Feminist Studies.

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Cultural Research and Digital Collections Workshop, Fall 2010

By Sasha Welland | Published: July 26, 2010

Participation open to faculty, staff, students, and others curious about blending print and digital materials (i.e., hybrid publication) or integrating online publishing into community-based research. No experience in the digital humanities or digital collections is required.

Registration is required at: http://bit.ly/aan2Cl

For credit option available to graduate and advanced undergraduates. An add code for HUM 597B (1 CR, C/NC) is required and can be requested when registering.

Instructors:
Sasha Su-Ling Welland (Anthropology and Women Studies)
Dave Lester (Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities)
Jentery Sayers (English)

Sessions:
Saturday, October 16, 10 a.m. – 2 p.m., Communications 202
Friday, October 22, 12:00 p.m. – 2 p.m., Communications 202
Saturday, October 30, 10 a.m. – 2 p.m., Communications 202

Held in conjunction with The Humanities And Technology Camp (THATCamp) Pacific Northwest 2010 at the University of Washington, this workshop/seminar examines the intersections of cultural research with online publishing, focusing specifically on the collection, circulation, and curation of digital assets (i.e., digital texts, images, video, and audio). Sessions will blend critical theory on scholarly multimedia production, authorship, and design with demonstrations of existing collections, modules on available platforms (e.g., Omeka, Drupal, WordPress), discussions of best practices, and conversations with UW scholars who are currently developing and curating their own collections. Short readings will include material by Johanna Drucker and Walter Benjamin.

Participants will learn about the cultural issues—both technical and theoretical—related to digital collections and how to launch and sustain them. They may also choose to set-up and test a collection.

UW Students receiving credit will write an individual statement of interest (250 words, due prior to the first session) and collaboratively produce a needs assessment (written during the final session). With the permission of those enrolled, the needs assessment will be made public and circulated online.

Sponsored by the Simpson Center for the Humanities, the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities at the University of Maryland, and the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.

Related Events (not required for participation or credit):

LECTURE:
Johanna Drucker (Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles),
Friday, October 22
5 p.m.
Henry Art Gallery, UW Seattle

UNCONFERENCE:
THATCamp PNW 2010
Saturday, October 23 and Sunday, October 24,
UW Seattle campus
http://thatcamppnw.org/

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Global Asia

By Sasha Welland | Published: July 19, 2010

Global Asia: ANTH 442 | SISA 442 | WOMEN 446 has been newly added to the time schedule for Autumn 2010.

  • Are you interested in the relationship between globalization and Asia?
  • Do you want to learn more about how historical and contemporary global movements of people, things, and ideas matter in everyday lives?
  • Do you care about questions of equality and social justice in a transnational context?

This interdisciplinary course—cross-listed in Anthropology, Asian Studies, and Women Studies—uses a feminist lens to examine how Asia as a region has been constructed through multiple global, and usually gendered, interactions, including imperialism, revolutionary anti-colonialism, travel and tourism, transnational labor and markets, and globalizing forms of popular culture. Our sites of inquiry range from the factory floor to the hip hop club, from international politics to intimate family relations. Students collectively create an on-line Global Asia Illustrated Compendium of Keywords and gain knowledge along the way about how to use the following digital tools for academic purposes: WordPress, Zotero, and Google Maps.

Global Asia satisfies the Women Studies major requirement for an upper division course focusing on transnational questions and perspectives.

For more information, see the course website. The course website will be updated for Autumn 2010 by the end of August. Check back then for the latest.

Full image captions: “A Modern Girl’s Belongings,” manga illustration, 1928; “Night of Celebration,” PRC propaganda poster (detail), 1964; Kohei Japan, kabuki woodblock CD jacket (detail), 2000.

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