51. Hybrid Bodies in Early Modern Art

This session welcomes proposals on hybridity in early modern art from Europe and beyond, with the aim of reassessing the term’s visual and epistemological connotations. We will focus on hybrid bodies―dynamic forms that resist categorisation.

In nineteenth-century imperial discourse, the concept of hybridity carried derogatory connotations of racial and cultural mixing. The term ‘hybrid’ has historically been used to impose hierarchies on disparate elements of a whole, which, at best, fail to grasp their coherence, or, at worst, replicate patterns of political oppression. Driven by Homi Bhabha’s theory of the ‘Third Space’ (1994), postcolonial studies have rehabilitated the term to argue that cultural identities are not fixed but constantly being negotiated.

Although the concept of hybridity has since generated considerable critical engagement in the humanities and social sciences, art history still downplays its complexity. The conventions of visual analysis which underpin our discipline encourage binary simplification. For example, the field of Monster Studies frequently reduces hybrid creatures to a human-animal dichotomy. This session advocates for interstitial thinking that recognises the dynamic encounters between demarcated binaries.

We invite historians of early modern art to reconsider the concept of ‘hybridity’ in relation to the body, by exploring themes like monstrosity, gender and race. In a world of fractured identities, we believe that the ambiguity of the ‘hybrid’ is something for art historians to urgently build on, rather than break down.

Themes: hybridity; early modern art; the body

Additional format comment: Four 20-minute research papers, each followed by 5 minutes for questions.

Lead Convenor: Kathryn Ffion Davies, Courtauld Institute of Art, United Kingdom

Co-convenors: Mathilde Mioche, Courtauld Institute of Art, 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.