Feminist Art History and Gender Theory Key Terms

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering key feminist theorists, art historical texts, institutional concepts, and historical periods from Enlightenment to modern feminist art history.

Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)

Enlightenment argument for women's rational capacities, natural rights, and equal education.

The Bluestockings

Literary and intellectual circles associated with educated women, especially in eighteenth-century Britain. Later became a derogatory label.

First-wave feminism

Late eighteenth through early twentieth century; focused on political, legal, and educational equality.

Suffrage movement

Organized effort to obtain women's voting rights; central to first-wave feminism.

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own (1929)

Women need money, independence, and space to produce literature and art.

Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949)

Examines woman as the Other, defined in relation to man. Your study guide lists 1953, but the original publication was 1949.

Second-wave feminism

c. 1960–1989; women's liberation, gender expectations, reproductive rights, and institutional equality.

Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (1963)

Critiques compulsory domesticity and the limitations of the suburban housewife ideal. Study guide lists 1962.

Biological essentialism

Belief that inherent biological differences determine fundamental characteristics or roles of women and men.

Social constructivism

Gender roles and identities are shaped through cultural practices, education, and social institutions.

Third-wave feminism

From c. 1990 in your course; emphasizes diversity, identity, intersectionality, and challenges to universal womanhood.

Intersectionality

Kimberlé Crenshaw's framework for understanding overlapping systems of power, including race, gender, and class.

bell hooks, Feminism Is for Everybody (2000)

Inclusive feminist politics; feminism benefits everyone and must confront intersecting forms of oppression.

Linda Nochlin, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” (1971)

Challenges the myth of genius and investigates institutional barriers to women's artistic success.

Griselda Pollock, “Feminist Interventions in the Histories of Art” (1988)

Calls for changing the discipline's methods and assumptions, not simply adding women to the canon.

Garrard and Broude, Reclaiming Female Agency (2005)

Emphasizes women as active makers of history and art rather than passive victims of patriarchy.

AWARE (2014)

Research organization founded by Camille Morineau to document and promote women artists.

The Academy

Prestigious institution controlling artistic education, professional recognition, and access to important genres. Women faced restrictions on membership and nude study.

The Salon

Major French public art exhibition; critical for professional recognition, reputation, and patronage.

The exceptional woman artist

Woman whose achievements are treated as extraordinary exceptions rather than evidence of women's broader artistic capabilities.

Politics of the gaze

Examines who has the power to look, who becomes an object of vision, and how looking reinforces or challenges gender hierarchies.

Romantic artist as genius

Artist imagined as an exceptional, imaginative, emotional, often melancholic individual; traditionally coded masculine.

Germaine de Staël, Corinne, or Italy (1807)

Novel exploring the tension between a gifted woman's artistic ambitions and expectations surrounding romantic love.

Les Bas-Bleus

French term for Bluestockings, often used to mock intellectual and ambitious women.

The woman of ideas

Intellectual woman who participates in literature, politics, philosophy, or criticism, challenging traditional gender roles.

Janis Bergman-Carton, “Conduct Unbecoming” (1995)

Examines Daumier's Les Bas-Bleus and the caricaturing of intellectually independent women as threats to social order.

Victorian England (1837–1901)

Period characterized by powerful ideals of domesticity, respectability, morality, and gendered divisions of labor.

Queen Victoria

British monarch whose public image as wife and mother reinforced domestic ideals despite her political authority.

Ideology of separate spheres

Men associated with public life and paid work; women with private life, home, and family.

Cult of True Womanhood

Ideal of feminine piety, purity, domesticity, and submissiveness.

Angel in the House

Idealized self-sacrificing wife and mother whose primary duty is caring for others.

Fallen woman

Woman perceived to have violated sexual morality, often portrayed through shame, vulnerability, or tragedy.

Victorian Women's Art Movement

Efforts to expand women's professional artistic education, exhibition access, employment, and recognition.

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB)

British artistic movement founded in 1848; drew inspiration from early Renaissance art, literature, nature, and detailed observation.

Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood

Women artists and models associated with the PRB, including Elizabeth Siddal and Marie Spartali Stillman; their own artistic contributions were often overshadowed.

White Marmorean Flock

Nickname for the community of American women sculptors working in Rome, associated with white marble and neoclassical sculpture.

Académie Julian

Private Parisian academy offering women serious professional training, including opportunities unavailable at major state institutions.

Union of Women Painters and Sculptors (France)

Professional association founded in 1881 to support women artists, organize exhibitions, and advocate greater educational access.