The essays in this book address the relationships between gender and the built environment, specifically architecture, in early modern Europe. In recent years scholars have begun to investigate the ways in which architecture plays a part in the construction of gendered identities. So far the debates have focused on the built environment of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to the neglect of the early modern period. This book focuses on early modern Europe, a period decisive for our understanding of gender and sexuality. .Much excellent scholarship has enhanced our understanding of gender division in early modern Europe, but often this scholarship considers gender in isolation from other vital factors, especially social class. Central to the concerns of this book, therefore, is a consideration of the intersections of gender with social rank.
Feminism is one of the most important perspectives from which visual culture has been theorized and historicized over the past forty years. Challenging the notion of feminism as a unified discourse, this second edition of The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader assembles 73 articles that address art, film, architecture, popular culture, new media and other visual fields from a feminist perspective. Articles are grouped into thematic sections, each of which is introduced by the editor. Providing a framework within which to understand the shifts in feminist thinking in visual studies, as well as an overview of major feminist theories of the visual, this reader also explores how issues of race, class, nationality, and sexuality enter into debates about feminism in the field of the visual.