ASECS Archive

The ​Émilie Du Châtelet Award is an annual prize of $500 made by the Women's Caucus of ASECS to support research in progress by an independent or adjunct scholar on a feminist or Women's Studies subject (deadline January 15, 2020).

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The 2019 Émilie Du Châtelet Award Winner:
Freya Gowrley
“Collage before Modernism? Periodization, Gender and Eighteenth-Century Women’s Collage”
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Dr. Freya Gowrley is a Visiting Lecturer in the History of Art Department at the University of Edinburgh. Her specialties are in the visual and material culture of Britain, North America, and the British Empire in the 18th-19th centuries. Project description: Dr. Gowrley’s project, entitled “Collage before Modernism? Periodization, Gender and Eighteenth-Century Women’s Collage,” focuses on the one hand on mapping out a history of collage as practiced and consumed by 18th century British women and at the same time challenges the notion of collage as a modern art form “invented” by the likes of Picasso and Braque with Synthetic Cubism circa 1912. Art History’s traditional focus on periodization and on the boundary between before and after Cubism are broken down when one invokes a more fluid timeframe, looking at collage as a continuous medium stretching from the 18th century forward. How a long-standing women’s amateur art form, a craft involving scraps and cuttings, came to be completely detached from male high art practice of early 20th century modernism is part of her historiographical aim. This project on collage as a genre and medium explores the discursive tensions between art and craft, professional and amateur, high art and material culture, male and female producer. Her larger project examines artistic and gendered identities in the amateur realm of female accomplishment in relation to the masculine character of the professional artist from the 18th to the 20th centuries.

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Visit http://www.asecswomenscaucus.com/eacutemilie-du-chacirctelet-award.html for the full list of past winners.

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