ARHT3663: Gender and Sexuality in Asian Art History

READING REQUIREMENTS

Assigned readings for the course are required preparation for participation in both lecture and tutorial each week. Please refer to the schedule on this outline and your canvas site. You are expected to prepare all readings in advance of class so as to be well prepared for active participation in lecture and tutorial discussions.

Preparing a reading means more than simply reading through it one time. Some of the assigned readings are relatively straightforward and are intended to provide background historical information; take notes and be sure that you have a firm grasp on the information the reading is trying to convey. Some of the readings are significantly more challenging however – preparing those readings means grappling with the ideas and arguments the author is trying to convey. You may need to read some of these texts two, or even three times before you fully understand them. In each case, make sure that you can give a sense of the overall argument in two to three sentences – the big picture – as well as break the text down into its various parts. 

There is no printed reader for this course; readings are available through the library’s eReadings system, which is accessible through the course Canvas site. 

Each week, one or two case-studies are drawn from the content of the lectures of the week before. Tutorials will focus on a select number of artists or a key historical moment in order to develop a substantial understanding of the issues. The brief summaries on topics for each week will give an indication of the key issues for discussion. You should read the texts with these in mind, developing opinions and questions to be raised in class. 

Prescribed Reading and Background Reading. Prescribed reading relates to specific issues to be discussed in class; students should read both texts for each tutorial. Background reading can be used to review general historical and technical material raised in lectures and tutorials as well as to broaden one’s knowledge of similar issues across different countries. When reading the listed texts, take note of any information that you regard as significant (for example, key dates or interpretations, points of dispute, and so forth). These notes will be useful in class discussion and may provide the basis for your research topic. 

You can find the prescribed and background reading list on your Canvas site for this unit. Click through each module for the weekly readings.  

Additional information:

Throughout the course, students are encouraged to visit galleries, exhibitions, and collections of modern and contemporary Asian art in Sydney. These include 4A Gallery: Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Artspace, UTS Gallery, Casula Powerhouse, Campbelltown Regional Art Centre, the Art Gallery of NSW, the Museum of Contemporary Art, White Rabbit Museum & Collection, as well as commercial galleries, and artists-run-initiatives with attention paid to art and artists from Asia.

DETAILED SCHEDULE OF READINGS AND LECTURES

Week 1: 6 August 2026

Engendering Art Histories: Feminist Perspectives and Forms of Knowledge

This introductory lecture will consider the significance of gender as an interpretative tool in Asian art history, the issue of gender disparity in discourse and the rise of feminist art historical scholarship on the impact of Asian art. It will provide a broad overview of scholarship centred on representations of gender and sexuality in particular Asian cultures. The lecture will further discuss the broader, discursive pitfalls of recovery projects such as women-centred discourses and exhibitions, as well as the strategies undertaken by feminist artists/cultural practitioners and art historians in the context of Asian art.

Readings

. Chino, Kaori. “Gender in Japanese Art” in Gender and power in the Japanese visual field, eds. Joshua S. Mostow, Norman Bryson, Marybeth Graybill (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003) 17- 34.

. Dirgantoro, Wulan. “Introduction” in Feminisms and Contemporary art in Indonesia: Defining Experiences (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017) 15-36.

Additional Readings

. Low, Yvonne. “A ‘Forgotten’ Art World: The Singapore Art Club and its Colonial Women Artists”, in Charting Thoughts: Essays on art in Southeast Asia, Low Sze Wee & Flores, Patrick eds. (Singapore: National Gallery Singapore, 2017) 104 – 119.

. Welland, Sasha Su-Ling. “Introduction: Chinese Contemporary Art in the Expanded Field”, Experimental Beijing: Gender and Globalisation in Chinese Contemporary Art (Durham: Duke University Press, 2018) 7-40.

Week 2: 13 August 2026

Figuring the Nation: Modernity, Nudes and the Male Gaze

This lecture discusses the way in which particular images function to construct meaning and inform power and ideology within nationalists contexts. “Woman” as a symbol of the nation can sometimes be infused with idealizations of modernity and traditionalism in particular Asian cultures coming out from colonialism. This lecture examines how sexualized representations of women embodied modernities through which the patriarchal State could use to serve nationalist agendas. How were women positioned through visual symbols as the biological reproducer of the nation? What do such histories reveal about masculinity and male subjectivity even as they serve to underscore ideals of femininity?

Readings

. Matt Cox, “The painting of Prostitutes in Indonesian Modern Art”, Journal of Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern art in Asia, Vol. 1, no. 2 (Oct 2017): 41-64.

. Norman Bryson. “Westernizing bodies: Women, art and power in Meiji Yoga” in Gender and power in the Japanese visual field, eds. Joshua S. Mostow, Norman Bryson, Marybeth Graybill (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003) 89-118.

Week 3: 20 August 2026

‘What intersectional feminist art looks like’ [Film Screening and Workshop] with interdisciplinary, research-based artist Hương Ngô

A screening, conversation, and workshop with artist Hương Ngô, whose interdisciplinary, research-based practice traverses borders and listens for what remains. At once intimate and political, Ngô’s work excavates colonial archives, surveillance records, and the obscured histories of anti-colonial women, asking how artistic research might hold space for what empire tried to erase.

Please see Canvas for readings and workshop materials.

Week 4: 27 August 2026

Showing Women’s Art at AGNSW
Field trip and Exhibition viewing: And still I rise

In preparation for your first assignment, we travel to the Art Gallery of New South Wales to see And Still I Rise. Bringing together twenty culturally diverse women artists living in Australia, the exhibition celebrates making and materiality while reaching beyond the established narratives of contemporary Australian art. The visit grounds our inquiry into showing women’s art: the curatorial, institutional and political stakes of how such work is exhibited, collected and seen.

Please see Canvas for details.

Week 5: 3 September 2026

Pictures of love and desire in Edo Japan: Commodifying sexuality

In considering broadly the subject of sexuality in the visual culture of Edo Japan, this lecture examines the role women played in the Yoshiwara world as the harbinger of culture, here as the ‘subject’ and how they were pictured in prints, as ‘objects’ of desire. Further the lecture will consider as well the ways in which the study of representations of sex in early modern Japan could open up a discourse on the currency of sexuality within the larger context of neoliberal economies across Asia.

Readings

. Mostow, Joshua S. “The gender of Wakashu and the Grammar of Desire” in Gender and power in the Japanese visual field, eds. Joshua S. Mostow, Norman Bryson, Marybeth Graybill (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003) 49-70.

[Chapter] Davis, Julie Nelson. “Unrolling Pictures for the erotic imagination: A designer, his publisher, and the scroll of the sleeve”, Partners in print: Artistic collaboration and the Ukiyo-e Market (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2015) 108-142. 

Week 6: 10 September 2026

‘Men paint, Women weave’: Women and Tradition in Asian art history

This lecture focuses on the gendered division of labour in particular visual and artistic cultures in Asia, with attention paid to the implications and ramifications such traditional practices can have on art historiography. Equally significant traditional craft practices such as batik making, basket making, pottery – often viewed as predominantly women’s domain – are positioned as secondary or low art in some Asian cultures. How does the inclusion of such histories destablise existing/canonical narratives of modern Asian art? To this end, this lecture also considers broadly the impact that 'traditions'/'traditional practice' can have in contemporary art practices and its concomitant impact on the reconstruction of meanings of sexuality and the articulation of women's subjectivity.

Guest lecture: “Women and Tradition in Balinese Art History”, Dr Siobhan Campbell

Readings

. Purtle, Jennifer. “The Icon of the Woman Artist: Guan Daosheng (1262-1319) and the Power of Painting at the Ming Court c. 1500”, in A Companion to Asian Art and Architecture, eds. Rebecca Brown and Deborah Hutton (England: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) 290-317.

. Campbell, Siobhan. “Women, tradition and art history in Bali”, Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia 3 (1): March 2019: 77-101. 

Week 7: 17 September 2026

Beauties for Export: Images of Women in Canton’s Glass Paintings
Guest Lecturer: Maria Karageorge

This workshop explores research design and methodologies in Chinese art with focus paid to the portrayals of Oriental women in glass paintings for a ‘Western’ foreign market. Drawing on a recently completed Honours thesis on the export paintings made by local artisans in Canton (now Guangzhou) known as glass paintings from 1757 to 1842, Maria Karageorge will share her research on the maker's gaze in staging experiences of “seeing” China for European travellers. Taking into consideration how these makers adapted styles, materials, technologies, and subject-matter that were local as well as foreign, she will examine how silver plate-glass mirrors imported from Europe offered new possibilities for accessing Oriental women in otherwise private spaces. The transgressive social potential of these images will also be explored against the realities of a Canton which prohibited such forms of foreign contact. What did local makers hope to achieve through these portrayals as they invoked a Western male gaze? What ideas about Oriental women and womanhood were expressed through decorative objects exported? 

Readings:

 . Kleutghen, Kristina. “Chinese Occidenterie: The Diversity of “Western” Objects in Eighteenth-Century China.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 47, no. 2 (2014): 117-135.

. Cheng, Wen-chien. “Idealized Portraits of Women for the Qing Imperial Court.” Orientations 45, no 4 (2014): 86-99.

Week 8: 24 September 2026

‘Holding up Half the Sky’: Women artists, collectives and exhibitions

This lecture examines the separation of male and female spheres of activity in the modern context and the rise of women collectives that grew out from particular circles. What are the contributions of women artists to the modernist projects of the respective art world? In recovering their work and contributions historically, how can we avoid committing the pitfall of segregating women’s art and building another canon? To this end, this lecture will also consider some of the ways in which women artists and cultural practitioners operating in conventionally male-dominated art worlds have re-claimed the space to assert their artistic subjectivity and agency.

Readings

. Nair, Varsha. “Womanifesto: A biennial art exchange in Thailand”, Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia 3 (1): March 2019, 147-171.

. Andrews, Julia and Shen, Kuiyi. “Traditionalism as a Modern Stance: The Chinese Women’s Calligraphy and Painting Society”, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, vol. 11, no. 1 (1999): 1-29.

. Cajipe-Endaya, Imelda. "Kasibulan and the Parallels Between the Personal and the Collective", Ctrl + P Journal of Contemporary Art, no. 6 (2007): 20-24.

MID SEMESTER BREAK 28 Sept - 5 Oct 2026

Week 9: 8 October 2026

Dwelling in the Archives: Women’s Biography and Digital Intervention

Platforms such as Khan Academy and SmartHistory are highly popular sites designed to educate both broad and targeted audiences on the rich and dynamic histories of art, spanning the historical and the contemporary. Often written by specialists, these entries are written journalistically, with the aim of making history interesting as opposed to dull and prosaic. Students will focus on developing biographical narratives. The artist’s biography is a popular genre of writing and does much to give visibility to figures left out of canonical art histories. Diverse and dynamic, biography becomes a feminist strategy for “un-forgetting”, for bringing to fore lives the official record holds only partially or not at all. Students will examine current examples such as the projects initiated by AWARE (Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions) and others, considering both the discursive work of biography and the digital platforms through which these histories now circulate and expand.

Readings

. Antoinette Burton, Dwelling in the Archive: Women Writing House, Home, and History in Late Colonial India (Oxford University Press, 2003), intro.

. Kathryn Brown and Elspeth Mitchell, “Feminist Digital Art History,” in The Routledge Companion to Digital Humanities and Art History, ed. Kathryn Brown (New York: Routledge, 2020), 43–57.

Week 10: 15 October 2026

Queer Visibility and Censorship in Contemporary Asian Art

The imposition of compulsory heterosexuality and the suppression of homosexuality in and across particular Southeast Asian countries is intimately linked to postcolonial politics and played out in various modes of social engineering. These marginalised positions are recently consolidated in the art and writings of cultural practitioners, that have since revealed a much longer history of engagement with queer politics in the arts. This lecture will provide a survey of contemporary artists whose works engage with body politics, ranging from photography, performance and installations. It will explore the issues that underpin the act of censorship in the Contemporary arts of Asia, with specific attention paid to the censoring of sexually explicit material or gender-specific content. Very often, such state-sanctioned acts are intended to control and suppress transgressions against the mainstream in the interest of the ruling government and the so-called ‘public’. In what way does the censorship policy adhere to an ideology of heteronormativity and to that end, serve to safeguard national regeneration?

Readings 

. Soon, Simon. “Fabric and the Fabrication of a Queer Narrative: The Batik Paintings of Patrick Ng Kah Onn”, Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific, no. 38 (2015): 1-22. 

. Ho, Louis. “Loo Zihan and the Body Confessional”, in Contemporary Arts as Political practice in Singapore, eds. Wernmei Yong Ade and Lim Lee Ching (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) 29-44.

.  Langenbach, Ray. “Looking back at Brother Cane: Performance art and State Performance”, Histories, Practices, Interventions: A reader in Singapore Contemporary Art,eds. Jeffrey Say and Seng Yu Jin (Singapore: Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore LaSalle College of the Arts, 2016) 178-196.

Week 11

What are Zines? Zine-Making Workshop with Rare Books Fisher Library

A physical zine is a printed, tangible object (assembled by hand or at a print shop) that readers can hold, fold, and share in person. It often has a handmade, DIY aesthetic and is distributed physically through mail, events, or local spaces. A born-digital zine, by contrast, is created entirely on a computer using tools like Canva, Google Docs, Microsoft Word, or Adobe InDesign, and exists in a digital format; it is shared online, via email, or as a downloadable file. While a physical zine offers a tactile, craft-driven experience, a born-digital zine is more accessible to produce and distribute widely without printing costs. For this workshop we are focused on making a physical zine (or what we sometimes call analog) but you also can make a digital zine if you prefer - and if that is the case, you won't be exhibiting the physical zine but showing it on a device (i.e. phone/iPad/laptop).

This week’s class will be held in the library, using the Seminar Room and Exhibition Space on Level 2 Fisher Library for the full three-hour session.

The session will begin with an introduction to zines by Anne Goodfellow (Cultural Collections Librarian), focusing on how to represent research through the format, followed by time to view the library's zine collection. Students will then move to the Exhibition Space to produce a zine — either as a first draft for the assessment or as a format exploration exercise. The session will conclude with a structured debrief in the Seminar Room.

Week 12: 29 October 2026

Exhibition/Presentation Week

Please see Canvas for more information.

Week 13: 05 November 2026

A Coda: Interventions and Innovations in Feminist art history

This final lecture will review some of the issues raised throughout the course, through the lens of post-feminism. Given the proliferation of women artists in the contemporary art world(s), and in light of the inter-connectedness of networks operating beyond national borders that now offered opportunities for the so-called marginalised artists – both male and female – to achieve creative autonomy, how relevant is it still to support women-centred exhibitions and discourses? What new discursive strategies are required to fully capture the criticality of positions and self-positioning of individuals in light of the interplay of sexual politics? It will consider briefly the uses and problems of digital tools and methods to open up new discourses and to perform interventions for feminist art history.

Prescribed Readings

. Kee, Joan. “What is Feminist about Contemporary Asian Women’s Art?”, in Global Feminisms: New Directions in Contemporary Art (exh. cat.), Maura Reilly and Linda Nochlin, eds. (London and New York: Merrell Publishers and Brooklyn Museum, 2007) 107-121.

. Merlin, Monica. "Editorial: Gender (still) matters in Chinese contemporary art", Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, special Gender issue, vol. 6, no. 1 (2019): 5-15.

Additional Readings

. Lingham, Susie. “The crisis of context: What holds heterogeneities together”, in Text and Subtext: Contemporary art and Asian Women, Huangfu, Binghui, ed. (Singapore: Earl Lu Gallery, 2000), 165-176.

. Egeland, Cathrine. “Differences that matter? Or: what is feminist critique?”, Sex, breath, and force: sexual difference in a post-feminist era, ed. Ellen Mortensen (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2006).

. Reilly, Maura. “Introduction: Toward Transnational Feminisms”, in Global Feminisms: New Directions in Contemporary Art (exh. cat.), Maura Reilly and Linda Nochlin, eds.  (London and New York: Merrell Publishers and Brooklyn Museum, 2007) 15-46.