Frames of reference: Art, Race, Sexuality and Nationhood

Centre for Modern Studies postgraduate forum seminar 

This CModS post-graduate forum seminar encompasses three different methodological approaches to the cultures surrounding the creation and display of artworks in the modern period. The seminar brings together three papers by PhD researchers in the History of Art department, Liz Renes, Kuang Vivian Sheng and Helen Shaw. Each paper establishes a wide cultural framework to foreground issues of sexuality (Liz), race (Helen) and nationhood (Vivian) in each case study. The breadth of the seminar seeks to represent the diversity of research at York but also to engage broader questions of methodology and intersectionality in writing art histories.

• Liz Renes - ‘The Mystery of White Things’: Aestheticism, Obsession and Female Corporeal Whiteness
• Kuang Vivian Sheng – Public Toilet as Communal Space: everyday participation, exclusion and conflict in Yin Xiuzhen’s Restroom W
• Helen Shaw – How Do We See Each Other? Contemporary Native Perspectives: Dialogue and Exchange in Curatorial and Artistic Practices and Methodologies.

The seminar will be chaired by Amy Tobin (History of Art).

All welcome, no need to book.