Women on Philosophy of Art is the first study of women's philosophies of art in long nineteenth-century Britain. It looks at seven women spanning the time from the Enlightenment to the beginning of modernism. They are Anna Barbauld, Joanna Baillie, Harriet Martineau, Anna Jameson, Frances Power Cobbe, Emilia Dilke, and Vernon Lee. The central issue that concerned them was how art related to morality and religion. Baillie and Martineau treated art as an agency of moral instruction, whereas Dilke and Lee argued that art must be made for beauty's sake. Barbauld, Jameson, and Cobbe thought that beauty and religion were linked, while other women believed that art and religion must be decoupled. Other topics explored are gender and genius, tragedy, literary realism, why we enjoy the sufferings of fictional characters, the hierarchy of the art-forms, whether art can transcend its historical circumstances, and critical issues around the artistic canon. Examining the print culture that made these women's interventions possible, this book shows that these women were doing a particular kind of philosophy of art, which was interdisciplinary and closely tied to artistic criticism and practice. The book traces how these seven women influenced one another, as well as engaging with their male contemporaries. But unlike their male interlocutors, these women have been unjustly left out of narratives about the history of aesthetics. By including these women, we can enrich and broaden our understanding of the history of philosophy of art.

Feminist approaches to art are extremely influential and widely studied across a variety of disciplines, including art theory, cultural and visual studies, and philosophy. Gender and Aesthetics is an introduction to the major theories and thinkers within art and aesthetics from a philosophical perspective, carefully introducing and examining the role that gender plays in forming ideas about art. It is ideal for anyone coming to the topic for the first time. Organized thematically, the book introduces in clear language the most important topics within feminist aesthetics: Why were there so few women painters? Art, pleasure and beauty Music, literature and painting The role of gender in taste and food What is art and who is an artist? Disgust and the sublime. Each chapter discusses important topics and thinkers within art and examines the role gender plays in our understanding of them. These topics include creativity, genius and the appreciation of art, and thinkers from Plato, Kant, and Hume to Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva. Also included in the book are illustrations from Gaugin and Hogarth to Cindy Sherman and Nancy Spero to clarify and help introduce often difficult concepts. Each chapter concludes with a summary and further reading and there is an extensive annotated bibliography. Carolyn Korsmeyer's style is refreshing and accessible, making the book suitable for students of philosophy, gender studies, visual studies and art theory, as well as anyone interested in the impact of gender on theories of art.

Women have been making art for centuries, yet their work has been seen as secondary or has gone unrecognized altogether. Women Making Art asks why this is so, and what it would take for us to realize the extent of women's extraordinary contribution to the arts. Marsha Meskimmon mobilizes contemporary feminist thinking to reconsider how and why women have made art. She examines work by a wide range of women artists from different cultures and historical periods, including Rebecca Horn, Rachel Whiteread, Shirin Neshat and Maya Lin, emphasizing the diversity of women's art and the importance of differences between women.

"A first-rate introduction to the field, accessible to scholars working from a variety of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives. Highly recommended... " -- Choice "... offers both broad theoretical considerations and applications to specific art forms, diverse methodological perspectives, and healthy debate among the contributors.... [an] outstanding volume."Â -- Philosophy and Literature "... this volume represents an eloquent and enlightened attempt to reconceptualize the field of aesthetic theory by encouraging its tendencies toward openness, self-reflexivity and plurality." -- Discourse & Society "All of the authors challenge the traditional notion of a pure and disinterested observer that does not allow for questions of race/ethnicity, class, sexual preference, or gender." -- Signs These essays examine the intellectual traditions of the philosophy of art and aesthetics. Containing essays by scholars and by the writer Marilyn French, the collection ranges from the history of aesthetic theory to a philosophical reflection on fashion. The contributions are unified by a sustained scrutiny of the nature of "feminist," "feminine," or "female" art, creativity, and interpretation.

Résumé éditeur : This book tells two intertwined stories, centered on twentieth-century moral philosophers Elizabeth Anscombe, Mary Midgley, Philippa Foot, and Iris Murdoch. The first is the story of four friends who came up to Oxford together just before WWII. It is the story of their lives, loves, and intellectual preoccupations; it is a story about women trying to find a place in a man's world of academic philosophy. The second story is about these friends' shared philosophical project and their unintentional creation of a school of thought that challenged the dominant way of doing ethics. That dominant school of thought envisioned the world as empty, value-free matter, on which humans impose meaning. This outlook treated statements such as “this is good” as mere expressions of feeling or preference, reflecting no objective standards. It emphasized human freedom and demanded an unflinching recognition of the value-free world. The four friends diagnosed this moral philosophy as an impoverishing intellectual fad. This style of thought, they believed, obscured the realities of human nature and left people without the resources to make difficult moral choices or to confront evil. As an alternative, the women proposed a naturalistic ethics, reviving a line of thought running through Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas, and enriched by modern biologists like Jane Goodall and Charles Darwin. The women proposed that there are, in fact, moral truths, based in facts about the distinctive nature of the human animal and what that animal needs to thrive."

"This revolutionary book empowers its readers intellectually by providing a snapshot of perennial and timely philosophical topics. Written by twenty expert women in philosophy and representing a diverse and pluralistic approach to philosophy as a discipline, this book appeals to a wide audience. Individual readers, especially girls and women ages 16-24, as well as university and high school educators and students who want a change from standard anthologies that include few or no women will find value in these pages. This volume contains several notable features: the book is divided into four sections that correspond to major fields in Philosophy-metaphysics, epistemology, social and political philosophy, and ethics-but the chapters within those sections provide fresh ways of understanding those fields. " Every chapter begins with a lively anecdote about a girl or woman in literature, myth, history, science, or art to introduce the chapter's specific topic." Chapters are dominated by women's voices, with nearly all primary and secondary sources used coming from women in the history of philosophy and a diverse set of contemporary women philosophers. "All chapters offer the authors' distinct philosophical perspectives written in their own voices and styles, representing diverse training, backgrounds, and interests." The Introduction and Prologue explicitly invite the book's readers to engage in philosophical conversation and reflection, thus setting the stage for continued contemplation and dialogue beyond the book itself. The result is a rigorous yet accessible entry-point into serious philosophical contemplation designed to embolden and strengthen its readers' own senses of philosophical inquiry and competence. The book's readers will feel confident in knowing that expert women affirm an equitable and just intellectual landscape for all and thus have lovingly collaborated to write this book"--