The histories of feminisms and cultural production have intimately been intertwined. Particularly in the 1970s and 1980s, cultural production (fiction, films, art) all worked together to create feminist projects. This work challenged the bourgeois artist figure and ideology of individualism, centered women's experiences with gender, heterosexuality, and racial oppression creating empowering feminist cultures. Feminist cultural practice in the 21st century has expanded to include a broader range of practices, concerns and communities. In particular, a focus on gender in an attempt to captures complex gender identifications and social positionings that include men and masculinity studies, combined with an increasing recognition of the importance of integrating an understanding of `race’ and racism, and the growth of queer cultural production has shifted practices and debates in feminist cultural production. Such a shift has created more inclusive feminisms in which intersecting oppressions, privileges and needs speak across communities of difference. Feminist cultural production has increasingly been in dialogue with historians, critics, theorists, viewers, educators, and galleries, where feminist art becomes a site that acquires multiple meanings. Members of this research cluster critically debate practices of feminist cultural production and contribute to feminist dilemmas arising from cultural practices.
Faculty and students in the group come from York University, but also from other institutions in Canada and internationally. They represent a variety of disciplinary backgrounds including: sociology, gender and women’s studies, fine arts, film, drama, and environmental studies.
Members of the research cluster have a number of interests:
- Feminist queer haunted houses.
- Performance and queer pedagogy
- Post-colonial cultural production
- Photographic representations of South Asian Canadian history
Outcomes:
Book (Published in 2012): Undesireables: White Canada and the Komagata Maru