Contemporary Proto-Feminisms: Reclaiming Historical Femininity in Practice and Criticism
This session invites presentations on contemporary visual art and recent art histories (post-1960) that revise and iterate upon proto-feminism. It asks: how might we extend and revise the term ‘proto-feminism’ beyond its conventional grounding in literary and art historical discourse tied to the rise of modern political feminism? Can it be used or remade to describe contemporary artistic strategies that reclaim, embody, or complicate historical feminine identities?
Historically, proto-feminism has been used to describe figures who articulated women’s rights before the emergence of the modern feminist movements. However, this framing often centres Western, linear notions of political emancipation and is critiqued for projecting present-day, dominant, White feminist values onto past contexts.
The session seeks contributions that investigate how proto-feminism is refigured through engagement with diverse histories of femininity by current artistic practices and critical methodologies in art history and art criticism. Topics may include—but are not limited to—marginalised global histories of femininity; colonial legacy; myth and folk-lore; ancestral, spiritual rituals; deep-time organisms and non-human life; archaeology and anthropology; non-linear and speculative temporalities, e.g. time travel; anachronistic reading; ghosts and the undead; genealogies and inheritance; archive-based interventions such as critical fabulation and esoteric knowledge systems associated with femme identities.
The session will begin with a 5-minute framing by the convenor, followed by up to three research papers or artistic presentations (e.g., short films under 15 minutes), and then a convened debate and Q&A.
Submit your Paper via this form. Please download, complete and send it directly to the Session Convenor(s) below by Sunday 2 November 2025:
Helen Kaplinsky, Liverpool John Moores University, Exhibition Research Lab, helenkaplinsky@gmail.com