44. Fluid Bodies / Women in Flux

Women’s bodies have long been associated with fluids: blood, tears, milk. But what does it mean to be fluid? This panel will address associations of women’s bodies with fluids of different kinds, along with notions of fluidity as they relate to representations of women’s bodies at different life stages: birth, puberty, pregnancy, menopause and old age. Drawing on recent innovations in intersectional and trans art history, this panel seeks to address the complex and contested topic of the role of fluids and other bodily substances (e.g. hormones, hair, fat, etc.) in defining and/or undermining definitions of femininity and womanhood in art and visual culture.

This panel will examine how images of the female body have been idealised, pathologised and politicised at different stages of life, and how women artists have resisted, reimagined or reclaimed these frameworks through their creative practices. We hope to see papers that span historical and contemporary visual cultures; engage with both canonical and marginalised figures; examine either representations of women across life stages or address the lifespans of women artists themselves; interrogate how female bodies have served as sites of symbolic meaning, social anxiety and aesthetic value; and attend to the lived experiences and creative trajectories of women artists across their own embodied lives.

This panel will foreground questions of temporality, age and bodily change—dimensions often overlooked in traditional art historical narratives—and reposition them as central to understanding the dynamics of gendered representation.

Themes: Women, Fluids, Bodies

Additional format comment: Individual papers with a panel discussion.

Lead Convenor: Natasha Ruiz-Gomez, University of Essex, United Kingdom

Co-convenors: Tania Cleaves, Independent, United Kingdom

To submit a Paper to this Session, please follow the guidance on our website and complete the AAH 2027 Call for Papers Proposal Submission Form.