During the course we will conduct a critical survey of the modern art history and of several well-known and canonical art works, using feminist methodology and seminal texts regarding gender issues.

We will perform re-readings of familiar subjects in art history and suggest interpretations that prevail in the contemporary disciplinary discourse, among them using the discourses of multiculturalism; post-colonialism and globalization.

The course will survey two major time periods – the 19th Century and the 20th Century. In the first part, we will discuss and analyze artifacts from the European continent and in the second part we will move on to have a close look at art made in the Americas. We will be asking questions such as why so many of the art works focus on depicting the female body – mostly naked; what exactly was it in the 'modern experience' of the 19th Century Paris that gave way to male-artists to prosper and tended to exclude women-artists, and what kind of subjects, themes and media did women-artists work in during that period in spite of their difficulties; what are the connections and the relations between pornography and 'high art';  which new trends in the second half of the 20th Century gave way to new opportunities for women artists and changed their position in the art-scene and in culture in general; and many more.