Happy International Women’s Day 2024!

The School of Art History is committed to creating an inclusive environment that supports equality and diversity. Our School wishes to foster an environment free of prejudice, in which all staff and students feel able to reach their full potential. We are proud to celebrate diversity and actively encourage our students to engage and question issues relating to equality and diversity in their widest forms.

All of our modules and courses explore issues relating to equality and diversity and we are proud recipients of an Athena Swan Gender Equality Bronze Award. In the academic year 2023-24, we are delighted to be able to offer two new courses devoted to women artists.

Equality and diversity

‘Women Artists and Autobiography’, open to matriculated students, is a course entirely devoted to women and non-binary artists, introduces students to the work of women artists from the 1550s to the present, including Artemisia Gentileschi, Berthe Morisot, Faith Ringgold, and many others. The module focuses on artists who also wrote about their lives in letters, diaries, journals and memoirs. Students gain insights, from the perspective of the artists themselves, into the conditions affecting women's art production, including the tensions between family life and creativity. We explore how women used writing alongside self-portraiture to represent themselves and their work, reshaping existing myths of the artist in the process. We also study the increasingly complex crossovers between life and art in text-based art works and artists' books. As well as addressing the gendered constraints on women artists' careers, we analyse the category 'woman artist' critically, consider how some artists resisted gender norms, and explore the work of non-binary artists.

‘The Modern Artist: From Europe to Latin America’ is an online course, open to everyone. In contrast to the traditional narrative that often foregrounds the accomplishments of male artists, this course places a distinct emphasis on a carefully curated selection of women artists. By adopting this perspective, we aim to unravel themes such as marginalization, inclusion, self-representation, and the problematic influence of personal biographies on our comprehension of the artistic endeavours of women. We will examine artworks produced in France, Britain, Germany, Mexico, Brazil, and Venezuela, spanning various artistic mediums, including painting, sculpture, textiles, photography, collage, and design.

For more information visit: The Modernist Artist From Europe To Latin Ame - University of St Andrews (st-andrews.ac.uk)