THE FEMINIST LECTURE PROGRAM

THE ANIMATION OF MARY BLAIR: A FEMINIST’S GUIDE TO DISNEY with Invisible Women

Disney films have historically been built of images of women - those iconic, if deeply problematic Disney Princesses. Yet the animation world has historically been overwhelmingly male dominated, and when women have fought their way into this space their work has often been uncredited and their careers short.

Mary Blair (1911 - 1978) was a remarkable exception to this rule, an artist, illustrator and designer who played a key role in shaping some of Disney’s most iconic images. Through her work as a concept artist and art director on classics such as Dumbo, Cinderella, Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland, Blair pushed the boundaries of the genre. Blair’s influence pulses through contemporary animated film and although you might not know, you’ve almost definitely encountered Blair’s work already. Her distinctive style and unique use of colour helped elevate animation to the status of art, laying the groundwork for our current Golden Era of the form.

In this richly illustrated lecture, archive activists Invisible Women will present the story of Blair’s life and career, contextualising her work within the history of US animation and Disney Studios. We will dive into the many influences that fed into Blair’s creative practice, discussing how surrealism, classical ballet, contemporary fashion design and gothic architecture fed into her spellbinding imagery. We will also explore how a fateful government funded propaganda trip to South America had a lasting impact on her artwork, and how her personal demons - including struggles with relationships, mental health and addiction - brought an edge of darkness and melancholy to her fairytale worlds.

Most of all thought we will showcase and celebrate Blair’s magical artwork, offering an inspiring primer to a legendary artist. Prepare to be enchanted!Disney films have historically been built of images of women - those iconic, if deeply problematic Disney Princesses. Yet the animation world has historically been overwhelmingly male dominated, and when women have fought their way into this space their work has often been uncredited and their careers short.

Mary Blair (1911 - 1978) was a remarkable exception to this rule, an artist, illustrator and designer who played a key role in shaping some of Disney’s most iconic images. Through her work as a concept artist and art director on classics such as Dumbo, Cinderella, Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland, Blair pushed the boundaries of the genre. Blair’s influence pulses through contemporary animated film and although you might not know, you’ve almost definitely encountered Blair’s work already. Her distinctive style and unique use of colour helped elevate animation to the status of art, laying the groundwork for our current Golden Era of the form.

In this richly illustrated lecture, archive activists Invisible Women will present the story of Blair’s life and career, contextualising her work within the history of US animation and Disney Studios. We will dive into the many influences that fed into Blair’s creative practice, discussing how surrealism, classical ballet, contemporary fashion design and gothic architecture fed into her spellbinding imagery. We will also explore how a fateful government funded propaganda trip to South America had a lasting impact on her artwork, and how her personal demons - including struggles with relationships, mental health and addiction - brought an edge of darkness and melancholy to her fairytale worlds.

Most of all thought we will showcase and celebrate Blair’s magical artwork, offering an inspiring primer to a legendary artist. Prepare to be enchanted!

VOGUE MAGAZINE: INVENTION, ERASURE, PERVERSITY AND POWER with Nina-Sophia Miralles

Vogue magazine is considered the original fashion bible, the bastion of ultimate mode… it has burnt itself onto our cultural consciousness. Uncontested market leader for over a century and million-dollar money machine, it has made its name selling to women. And yet Vogue has often disparaged women and punished LGBTQ+ identities. This lecture both honours forgotten visionaries and looks at how social norms can be interpreted either harmfully or positively depending on their translator.

Join Nina-Sophia Miralles, journalist, fashion historian, and author of ‘GLOSSY: The Inside Story of Vogue’ for a one-of-a-kind insight into the world of fashion publishing and how it affects women everywhere. This session will reintroduce Vogue figureheads erased by the establishment, editors and icons who lived outside the heteronormative mould and had an outsize influence on the legendary magazine, as well as on art and culture at large.

This lecture will also lift the veil on the treatment of women at Vogue and look at how an all-male management affected office environments as well as artistic output in ways that trickled down into mainstream society. In this section, we’ll be looking at overtly sexual fashion shoots, the symbolism and messaging encoded into famous photographs, and the varied way in which Vogue has portrayed gender in its pages through the ages and why.

Nina-Sophia aims to examine how fashion publishing could break free of misogyny, and what lessons there are to be learnt for anyone who wants to work in the intersection of design, photography, art and journalism.

THE WOMEN OF THE BLACK BRITISH ART MOVEMENT with Dr. Sheree Mack
Black female artists made some of the most essential contributions to the Western Canon in the 20th Century - so why is it that their work has not been recognised? And how can we start acknowledging their contributions in the world today?

Join Dr. Sheree Mack for her incredible lecture that aims to re-situate the Women of the Blk Art Group and the Black British Art Movement as front and centre in the evolution of Black British Art, exploring how these artists created not just a movement but also unique spaces and opportunities for Black artists in Britain to show their work to the British public on their own terms.

Dismissed as political art or identity politics, Black art has not yet received its full aesthetic criticism or appreciation, let alone the women who helped forge it. Sheree will be delving into the repertoire of work from the likes of Sonia Boyce, Lubaina Himid and Claudette Johnson and many more, aiming to highlight their role in shaping the Western Canon, and their ever-lasting legacy to this day.

FEMALE CREATIVES AND SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE 19TH CENTURY with Lucy Cade

Why were there so many women involved in the spirit photography and spirit mediumship movement?

Join guest lecturer Lucy Cade to explore the mysterious origins of spirit photography and mediumship, which rose to popularity across Britain and the US during the Industrial period of the mid to late 1800s.

Through archival photographs and written accounts, Lucy Cade will establish the context for the birth of spirit photography and spirit mediumship. We will also find out about techniques, such as double exposures and ectoplasmic collages, which were largely pioneered by female mediums and allowed them to blur the lines between art and mediumship, almost pushing it into the realms of performance art.

We will find out how the lack of political agency and suffrage propelled countless women towards mediumship as a creative outlet and how the women of this movement made a creative life for themselves outside of the arts academy. We’ll also zoom out to look into the ripple effects of spirit photography on the art world which inspired the works of visionary painters like Georgiana Houghton and Hilma af Klint.

This lecture will give us a unique angle through which to explore feminism, creativity, Surrealism and Abstraction, as well as touch upon Victorian ideas about death and legacy.

WITCHING THE INSTITUTION: ACADEMIA AND FEMINIST WITCHCRAFT with Ruth Charnock and Karen Schaller

When we think about the academic institution, where is the witch? Equally, when we think about the witch, where is the academic institution? And why is it that although cultural representations of witches “coming into” their witching frequently imagine this initiation happening in the classroom, scholarly study of witches rarely acknowledges a relationship between the academic institution and becoming witch?

Written collaboratively, this piece takes the form of a series of spells and rituals to counteract the knowledge industrial complex and how it has positioned the witch. In service to these interventions, we’ll be building an altar, made from the following ‘objects’: feminist academics who write witch stories; feminist academics who leave academia to ‘become’ witches; feminist writers – such as Sylvia Townsend Warner (Lolly Willowes) and Mary Stewart (Thornyhold) – who are fascinated with witches; academics whose work on witchcraft has been discredited for being feminist; and feminist practitioners engaging witchcraft in protest against the structures and conditions of twenty-first century academia. Part of this work will be to reclaim academic witches who have been excluded from the academy’s account of itself and, sometimes, excluded in subtle ways from the academy itself. As part of this work, we are also interested in our own makings and unmakings as academic witches, in a longer genealogy. Building an altar works, here as an invocation whose articulation can, we believe, support the manifestation of new forms of protest, resistance, and re-imagining.

This session moves between a performance and a lecture, questioning the framework of a traditional lecture in order to explore the witch in academia.

THE VULVA'S PILGRIMAGE: MYTH AND MEANING IN MEDIEVAL VULVA BADGES with Dr. Noam Yadin Evron

Join us as we welcome Dr Noam Yadin Evron to discuss some of the most mysterious little objects in history - Medieval Vulva Badges!

In the last 200 years, thousands of Medieval badges have been discovered along the rivers of England, France, the Netherlands and Belgium. These badges, dated to the period from the end of the 13th century till the end of the 15th century, were worn by pilgrims on their way to central worship sites. While many depict Christian images, several hundreds of them represent a different iconography: they show genitals in varied contexts and actions: vulvas dressed as pilgrims with a rosary and a walking stick, vulvas riding horses and climbing ladders, vulvas being adored by penises, penises growing in gardens, and more.

The function of the badges is not quite clear. The common assumption is that they served as a talisman against the Evil Eye, perhaps more specifically against the Black Plague which ravaged Europe and Asia in the late 13th century, killing hundreds of millions of people over three centuries. The Black Plague, which was believed by its contemporaries to have been transmitted by the Evil Eye’s gaze, was one of the most disastrous events in human history. The badges might also reflect some aspects of the reality of pilgrimage. Pilgrimage provided a different, liminal, space for people to temporarily exist in, where sexual and gender norms could be suspended.

In this class we will consider some of the questions arising from these badges - without necessarily providing clear answers. We will consider their iconography and its subversiveness, and what they might reveal about gender norms in this period, explore their wider context of the plague and medieval society, and what we might be able to take from them as contemporary viewers.

READING MAKES ME HORNY: FEMINIST PUBLISHING AND MASTURBATORY READING with Sophie Paul

Join The Feminist Lecture Program for a short history of modern feminist publishing, putting the body into spaces of knowledge production.

This lecture looks at some methods involved in running a feminist, queer, disabled-led publishing programme, and unpacks what it means to take pleasure seriously as a research tool. To read masturbatorily is to put the body back into spaces of knowledge production: to spread our lubed fingers over library books, and send echoes through the library shelves.

Through a partial history of feminist publishing and reading from the 20thC to today, we will think through what contributions were made to the field of erotics and feminist publishing that we can look towards in establishing masturbatory reading as a liberatory practice for marginalised communities. Moving into contemporary responses, we ask how as readers we may find escape routes and alternative sites of teaching and imagining.

When we speak about Masturbatory Reading, we look towards the teachings of Audre Lorde in thinking through the power of the erotic; the horny strategies of Kathy Acker in breaking apart texts and putting them back together; the writings of McKenzie Wark in questioning the boundaries between Body and Book, and many more. To read masturbatorily is to be a fan, to wank like an embarrassing teenager, and consider what power awaits us in the library, archive, lecture hall if we also consider what is to be gained in the bedroom, kitchen, club.

This class understands intersections of gender, sexuality, race, class, and ability as shifting and many-limbed components to how one moves through the world. We will come away from the session with an expanded understanding of these intersections within a creative practice, a reading practice, and how, in prioritising our pleasure, we may challenge the hierarchies of knowledge keeping and contribute to the field of erotics.

BREASTFEEDING AS WORK: THE CONTRADICTIONS OF BREASTFEEDING UNDER CAPITALISM with Jo Harrison and Holly Isard

"In a context of severe time poverty, double-cup, hands-free pumps are considered the most desirable, as they permit one to express milk from both breasts at once while driving to work on the freeway.”

– Nancy Fraser, 2016

Waged or unwaged, breastfeeding is and has always been work. Looking back through its history one finds examples of wet-nursing, lactation porn, cell-culturing and human milk banks. Using social reproduction theory as a framework, this session will use examples from the history of art and popular culture to track the contradictions of breastfeeding under capitalism. From medieval altarpieces of the Madonna breastfeeding, and early modern paintings of Roman Charity nursing her father, through to contemporary works of techno-optimism and Instagram posts of breast pumping celebrities. As these depictions of breastfeeding play out on screen a number of threads emerge: the fetishisation of breast milk; breastfeeding as a social relation; maternal generosity; denaturalisings; biocapitalism and the value of breast milk, amongst others. Weaving image with word demonstrates the many forms of breastfeeding as labour across history.

Join lecturers Holly Isard and Jo Harrison for a whistle-stop art historical tour through images of breastfeeding which will explore reproductive labour and breastfeeding as work. Followed by Q&A which welcomes open discussion with the group further exploring examples of reproductive labour (including and beyond breastfeeding) and how this is entangled within the contradictory landscape of capitalism. Expect to learn about the concept of social reproduction theory – a core concept within feminist theory.

EXCRETA, THE ABJECT, AND FEMINISM IN ART HISTORY with Parumveer Walia

The wonderful Parumveer Walia returns to The Feminist Lecture Program for a study of the Abject as a psycho-social space and its connections to feminism.

Tate Modern defines the Abject as that which “transgresses and threatens our sense of cleanliness and propriety, particularly referencing the body and bodily functions”.

In Excreta and the Abject in Art History, a study of the Abject as a psycho-social space will be undertaken, and its connections to feminism analyzed. Our relationship to bodily material, and thereby ourselves and each other, will be discussed. Works that utilize such bodily by-products – urine, semen, menstrual blood, faeces, etcetera harness the Abject and produce an encounter that centers our relationship to the parts of us that lie beyond care and social acceptability. The policing of the female body and its functions are reworked and addressed in the works the lecture will discuss. Studying across a wide range of disciplines, including Painting, Photography, Sculpture, and more, this class will help attendees better understand the Abject as a mode of meaning-making beyond (and against) cultural concepts of ‘the proper’ and its historical use in the Arts.

We will study works that utilize the Abject either through material or through aesthetic, and discuss how these choices shape meaning and affect. A historical survey of the Abject in Art will be used to reveal the gendered politic ingrained in the subject: while the industry revered the ‘brave’ genius of artists like Marc Quinn for his Shit Painting (1997) and Shit Head (1997), the abject looks different when in the hands of Women Artists, who initially, and perhaps still, are not afforded the same liberties as their male counterparts. Artists like Carolee Schneemann and Sarah Lucas, however, offer an exciting antidote to study.

DRESSING DYKES: A HISTORY OF LESBIAN FASHION with Eleanor Medhurst

FLP welcomes back the incredible Eleanor Medhurst. Join her as she unpicks the history and significance of lesbian fashion over the last 200 years. This is a winding story - one that can’t be easily pinned down. So much of lesbian history has been deliberately forgotten or misremembered, but placing a microscope over the role of clothing and self-expression in these communities might just help breathe some life back into it!

During the session, we will hop from Anne Lister, a lesbian heiress in the early 19th century, to the lesbian activist group ‘Lavender Menace’ in the 1970s, taking some pit stops along the route and after. Eleanor will set the scene for a revival of lesbian fashion history, leading us into discussions around what this can teach us – whether that be in the context of broader fashion history, LGBTQ+ history, or the situation of lesbians today. Through artefacts of paintings and photographs, letters and diaries, we will gain a closer insight into lesbian fashion, and how these sources played an important role both in their own time, as well as today!

ENDOMETRIOSIS ACTIVISM: MAKING THE INVISIBLE VISIBLE with Alekszandra Rokvity

Endometriosis is dubbed “the invisible illness”. This nickname has double meaning – on the one hand, it refers to invisibility in the medical sense (endometriosis is difficult to recognize and diagnose); on the other hand, it refers to the social invisibility of endometriosis-patients. Realizing that poor care is a consequence of systemic gender-bias, patients have started creating a range of activist art across disciplines, calling attention to problems surrounding endometriosis-treatment. In this class, we will take a look at literature, visual art, and social media content created by patients with the goal of analyzing the creative wave of endometriosis advocacy and activism.

HYSTERICAL BODIES: GENDER, MEDICINE AND WANDERING UTERUSES with Luisa-Maria MacCormack

This session will explore one of the strangest theories in western medical history; ‘The Wandering Uterus Theory’, its almost unbelievable origins, and its ongoing complicity in the subjugated status of the female body in Western Medicine.* In this session we will be using the word female inclusively, to represent all self identifying women, femmes and thems who own a uterus, and those who don’t too.

Beginning with a brief tour of misogyny in ancient medicine, this session will explore the history of the Wandering Uterus theory in the ancient world, tracing its sinister evolution through the middle ages, the era of victorian medical men, and through to our own time.

The second part of the session will explore how the Wandering Uterus Theory evolved over time to become synonymous with ‘Hysteria’ (from the greek Hystera: Womb); another sex-selective disorder, this time associated with mental illness. This part of the session will explore the concept of hysteria, and the danger of yet another cover-all diagnosis which at one point consisted over 67 pages of symptoms - most of which are synonymous with the perfectly normal functioning of the female body.

In the final part of the session, we will explore the ongoing legacy of millennia of medical oppression, exploring how these theories linger under the surface of modern medicine. By scrutinising historical medical treatments for hysteria and acknowledging the gradual recognition of the mind-body connection, attendees will gain insights into the persistent gender biases in medicine and the ongoing challenges in achieving gender-inclusive healthcare.

FOLK MAGIC: MARIA PRYMACHENKO with Luisa-Maria MacCormack

This practical drawing and painting session will begin with a short talk exploring Maria’s life and work by our tutor Luisa, before exploring how to recreate elements of her compositions and what we can learn from her dynamic and bold use of colour.

A self-taught artist whose work comprised no fancy tricks and certainly no expensive mediums, Maria painted on what she could afford and what surrounded her; simple, inexpensive paper and often her own furniture, walls and even the outside of her house!

Maria often found that inspiration visited her in her dreams, her mythical creatures partly conjured by her imagination, and partly derived from her deep and abiding interest in Ukrainian legends, folktales and Fairy Tales.

In this session we will also delve into some of the incredible history of the Ukrainian folk tales and legends which inspired Maria, creating our own imagined Worlds inspired by them and populating them with Prymachenko inspired, wildly colourful flora and fauna.

This session will be an amazing opportunity to let loose and explore the seriousness of play! From our innate use of colour to our childhood fascination with monsters and legends, this session aims to re-create some of the in-built creativity that we all possess as children, yet often gets reprioritised when we formally ‘learn’ art.

ALBRECHT DÜRER: INVENTING THE WITCH with Luisa-Maria MacCormack

Almost ubiquitous in Pop culture, the visual stereotype of the witch essentially boils down to 'Young Sexy Witch' or 'Old Crone', we even see these tropes reflected in costume stores each year! But where did this image of the witch come from? How did it evolve? Did it accumulate gradually over time or was the witch 'invented'? And WHAT does Albrecht Durer, a German Renaissance Artist and Printmaker, have to do with this history?

This session will explore the curious point in our collective history where the image of the Witch began to morph; uncovering how the misogynistic and outlandish prints of Albrecht Dürer and his disciple Hans Baldung helped to forge the Witch as we know her today.

This session will explore how the political landscape of Europe helped this image proliferate, far and wide, and why these particular stereotypes are still so insidiously difficult to shake. We will also utilise Julia Kristeva's conception of 'Abjection' and the idea of the 'Monstrous Feminine' to unpick how Durer's conceptualisation of the witch belied a deep rooted mistrust and fear of the powerful, leaky, un-contained and uncontainable female body.

ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI: THE MAKING OF AN ICON with Luisa-Maria MacCormack

Join The Feminist Lecture Program for a lecture celebrating the life and works of Artemisia Gentileschi!

Artemisia. The woman who reinvented the Baroque, student of Caravaggio? Rape Survivor, Mother, Paintress to Kings and Queens, inspiration to seemingly all who know her work and story. Subject of plays, operas, one-woman blockbuster shows at the National Gallery London. Icon of the modern feminist movement.

This session, led by our very own Artemisia aficionado Luisa-Maria MacCormack, will immerse you in the turbulent story of one of the world's greatest female painters, arguably the world’s first woman to use art as a medium of resistance in her own personal and professional battles, living in a time when women’s rights did not yet exist.

This session will allow you to live and breathe her works, explore her inspiration and subject matter, analyse her paintings and - most curiously of all, explore the reasons behind her recent eruption into the contemporary art world. Luisa will be referencing her own series; FINDING ARTEMISIA, that was inspired by Artemisia's work, as well as the work of many other contemporary artists who have drawn on Artemisia as inspiration.

ECOLOGICAL DECLINE AND THE RISE OF MODERN WITCHCRAFT with Anna Titov

FLP welcomes Anna Titov to explore the fascinating links between socio-political climates, and witchcraft...

Witchcraft can be interpreted as a practice that enables the creation of an “otherworld”, a liminal space that one can enter or embody in order to perform manipulative actions through the form of ritual that bring real change into the perceived world that one has real interactions with.

The current resurgence of this practice in contemporary forms and the popularity of such comes as no surprise when one views these measures as a response to socio-political climates, a call for attention and intentional action on an individual level to manifest change on a grander scale. The online platforms of social media are all one needs to examine in order to find the base of these communities, and the popularity of "Witchtok" and similar online spaces is greatly increasing alongside awareness one of the greatest dangers to human existence, the climate crisis.

Drawing on observations concerning phenomenology, corporeality and subjectivity, nature and spiritual attention, this lecture will explore the witches’ creation of an otherworld as a means of self-preservation based on their particular lived context, namely the current lived irreversibility of the Anthropocene and the effects this has on humanity’s relationship with nature beyond ourselves, a cherished relationship observed in all stems of modern Paganism.

We will discuss how these spaces are created, aspects of interaction between a perceived realm and one that is visited, how communication with nonhuman entities deepens our relationship with nature in an empathetic way, and how the history of women and witchcraft shows us that strengthening these ritualistic practices may indeed be the first step to halting the damage we are inflicting on our environment.

HOLY HAGS: SINNERS AND SHEELA NA GIGS with Luisa-Maria MacCormack

Wander under the eaves of a 11th or 12th century Castle, Church or Cathedral, and one might expect to see gargoyles, beautiful gothic architecture, or even a grotesque or two. What most people probably WOULDN'T expect to see, is a figurine of a screaming woman holding her enormous vagina wide open like a doorway. That is to say - most people haven't ever seen or heard of a Sheela Na gig... 👀

Sheela Na Gigs are technically architectural grotesques, architectural grotesques found throughout most of European cathedrals, castles, and other buildings. They usually depict a female figure, (sometimes screaming), and nearly always with a hugely exaggerated Vulva. In some instances the vulvas in these carvings are immense, half the size of the rest of the body, and in others the figure is holding her vulva and vagina wide open, like a strange doorway!

Found throughout Great Britain, France and Spain, Sheelas are perhaps most deeply associated with Ireland where there are the greatest number of surviving Carvings. Scholars Joanne McMahon and Jack Roberts cite 101 examples in Ireland and 45 examples in Britain.

Theories abound on the origins and purpose of the Sheela, with the first serious scholarship on these enigmatic little sculptures only emerging in the 1970s, and scholars still seem quite unable to agree even upon the origins of the name Sheela Na Gig!

This lecture will explore the many conflicting histories and theories that surround these strange and enigmatic sculptures, and the inherent misogyny that underpinned much of their written history...

QUEER MYCOLOGIES: A FEMINIST’S GUIDE TO FUNGI with Luisa-Maria MacCormack

To celebrate the launch of our archive, we’re brining back one of FLP Director Luisa-Maria MacCormack’s iconic lectures that you can rent and watch via our BRAND NEW on demand archive!

Join Luisa for a Feminist History of our interspecies friendship with Fungi, examining the history of Foraging, Cooking, Growing, Researching and even the life cycles of Fungi themselves through a feminist lens. We will explore cutting edge theories around Queer Mycology, as well as the histories of some incredible female scientists whose research has changed the scientific world of Mycology forever. Using Fungi as a guide, we will question the future of interspecies friendship and even the boundaries of our own bodies.

SOFT SCULPTURE AND FEMINIST ART PRACTICE with Luisa-Maria MacCormack

Join FLP Director Luisa-Maria MacCormack as she delves into the fantastic history of Soft Sculpture! From Eileen Agar to heavy hitters like Dorothea Tanning and Louise Bourgeois, Faith Ringgold, Lee Bul and Yayoi Kusama. This session will explore the work of some of the most amazing soft sculpture artists working in the medium!

FEMINISM AND FAIRY TALES with Luisa-Maria MacCormack

Join FLP Director Luisa-Maria MacCormack for a lecture that explores the intersection between Feminism and Fairy Tales. The session will comprise an in depth examination of what makes a fairy tale- and crucially, what makes them so female-centric.

We will examine the history and structure of fairy tales from around the world, their archetypes and contexts, with reference to some of the great feminist folk-tales and the critical texts that accompany them; from Sheherezade to Angela Carter, and the seminal text ‘From the Beast to the Blonde’.

We will also explore the gendered nature of the stories we are told as children, as well as the gendered nature of the toys that children are encouraged to play with, aiming to break down our cultural understandings of boyhood and girlhood. We’ll cover archetype theory, the origin of the word ‘gossip’ and many other fascinating aspects of these most familiar stories.