Conference Organization
Challenging Empire: Women, Art, and the Global Early Modern World
Friday-Saturday, March 1-2, 2024
The symposium “Challenging Empire: Women, Art, and the Global Early Modern World”, part of the project Global Makers: Women Artists in the Early Modern Courts of Europe and Asia (www.globalmakers.ua.edu), is intended to extend and expand knowledge of cultural production by and for early modern women – particularly those associated with the courts – on a global scale. While numerous conferences, symposia, and resulting publications in the past several decades have addressed women as producers, consumers, and subjects of European art during the early modern period (c. 1400-1750), less consideration has been given to women’s roles in the courts – particularly as informed by the steadily increasing cross-cultural interactions (i.e. between Europe and Asia, the Americas, Africa, etc.) that characterized the period. This symposium aims to address this lacuna whilst simultaneously de-centering the traditional Euro- centric model of study in the analysis of women’s cultural production, presentation, and consumption surrounding courts and empires (institutions associated with ruling power). The goal is to encourage a more equitable view of early modern women’s experiences of and with art globally, across traditionally held national and continental boundaries.
The full program is available at at Challenging Empires Program.
This conference was made possible through the generous support of an Art History Grant from the Samuel Kress Foundation, an award from the University of Alabama Office of Research & Economic Development, the generous support of the Birmingham Museum of Art, the UA College of Arts & Sciences, the Hudson Strode Program in Renaissance Studies, the Asian Studies Program, the Department of Art & Art History, and the Alabama Digital Humanities Center.
Conference Presentation, March 4, 2022
Drs. Jones and Sung, along with Senior Project Assistant Becky Teague, presented the Global Makers project at the College Art Association (CAA) annual meeting in a session titled "Dismantling the Patriarchal Canon: Foregrounding Women Artists and Patrons through Digital Art History. The session was organized by Dana Hogan, Tracy Chapman-Hamilton, and Mariah Proctor-Tiffany. The session will be via Zoom - more information regarding registration and access is available at CAA Conference Program.
Book Launch: Women Artists in the Early Modern Courts of Europe, 1450-1700
Amsterdam University Press
Friday, September 24, 2021, NOON EST, Join us Via Zoom
With AUP Acquisitions Editor, Erika Gaffney, volume editor, Tanja L. Jones, and volume contributors Catherine Hall-van den Elsen, Adelina Modesti, and Maria Maurer
Women Artists in the Early Modern Courts of Europe, c. 1450.1700 presents the first collection of essays dedicated to women as producers of visual and material culture in the Early Modern European courts, offering fresh insights into the careers of, among others, Caterina van Hemessen, Sofonisba Anguissola, Luisa Roldán, and Diana Mantuana. Also considered are groups of female makers, such as ladies-in-waiting at the seventeenth-century Medici court. Chapters address works by women who occupied a range of social and economic positions within and around the courts and across media, including paintings, sculpture, prints, and textiles. Both individually and collectively, the texts deepen understanding of the individual artists and courts highlighted and, more broadly, consider the variety of experiences of female makers across traditional geographic and chronological distinctions. The book is also accompanied by the Global Makers: Women Artists in the Early Modern Courts digital humanities project (www.globalmakers.ua.edu), extending and expanding the work begun here.
For more information:
https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789462988194/women-artists-in-the-early-modern-courts-of-europe
Conference Presentation, October 29, 2021
Invited Talk, April 5, 2021
Dr. Jones presented "Making Global Makers: Digital Humanities and Women Artists from the Early Modern Period" via a virtual talk at University of Southern Mississippi, sponsored by the School of Performing and Visual Arts.
Conference Presentation, April 16, 2021
Drs. Jones and Sung presented the Global Makers project at the Association for Art History (AAH) annual meeting. This was an On-Line event, originally scheduled to be held at the University of Birmingham, UK. Their presentation, "Mapping Global Trajectories of Women Makers: Processes and Findings", was in collaboration with Dr. Tracy Chapman Hamilton, who was presenting her DH project, "Mapping the Medieval Woman" (https://tracychapmanhamilton.com/digital-projects/).
Art History Professors Awarded first Kress Grant at University
https://news.ua.edu/2020/07/art-professors-win-uas-first-kress-grant-for-digital-art-history/