Themed section Visual Arts through a Queer Lens (1800-2000)
Guest Editors: Sergio Cortesini, Giulia Simi, Ladislav Zikmundlender
We invite to submit papers investigating visual works in any media (from painting and sculpture to experimental cinema and digital media, illustrations, amateur works, posters, fanzines, etc.) that contributed to questioning social categorizations and fostered emancipatory discursive formations, over two centuries (1800-2000 ca). We take queer critique in its broader sense addressing not only sexuality and gender, but also race, age, ability, class. We shall consider all relevant proposals relating any context, but we would be particularly eager to read new research works that combine serious historical investigation in artistic creativity from areas understudied—either historically or geographically. While international art experiences from the 1970s on have often availed themselves of performative languages or new media that are structurally conducive to destabilizing meanings—or were inflected by the burgeoning discourses of Feminism, LGBT movements, de-colonialism and post-colonial narratives —instances of queer resilience are less obvious in earlier times, especially in the classicist or realist styles dominant before the avant-gardes. Therefore, papers that uncovered queer instances during the 19th century, or encoded in traditional realistic styles, would be particularly interesting. On the other hand, visual expressions that challenge the dominant Anglo-American narrative and which engage periphery, both in geographical, social and political meaning, would be promising fields of inquiry.
We welcome papers addressing (but not limited to) these topics:
• (Self)-Representation practices that questioned the social categorizations of gender, sex, ethnicity, social status;
• Queer meanings in experimental cinema, video-art and in performance;
• Artists on the move: migration, antiracism and post-colonial gaze;
• The relationship with feminist theories and movements;
• The artistic contribution to the burgeoning LGBT movement in the 1970s and 1980s;
• Queer subtexts in 19th century;
• Queer experiences within the dictatorships and oppressive regimes: oppression and negotiation with;
• Queer practices challenging the Center narrative from a peripherical context: Southern and Central-Eastern Europe; Non-Western artists working both in Western context and in Latin-America, Asia, Africa and Oceania, non-metropolitan groups.
• Queer spaces and places; queer collections, curating, criticism and art historiography.