PhD position, SNSF project Modern Painting and the Lesbian Gaze

The SNSF project Modern Painting and the Lesbian Gaze: Queer Women Artists in Europe, 1900–1950, hosted at the University of Basel's Institute of Art History (Departement of Arts, Media, Philosophy) and led by Prof. Dr. Charlotte Matter, offers a full-time doctoral position for the duration of 3.5 years. 

In analyses of artworks from the first half of the twentieth century, feminist art history has largely overlooked non-heterosexual sexuality and desire, while queer art history has primarily focused on the works of gay men. Against this background, the project proposes the notion of the 'lesbian gaze' as a methodological provocation to decentre the male and heterosexual gaze as dominant frameworks for interpreting modern painting.
The project brings together feminist and queer approaches to reposition the practices of women painters within queer art history. It adopts an intersectional framework that foregrounds the significance of class for queer lives, as well as for conditions of artistic production, thematic concerns and the circulation of artworks. Grounded in rigorous art-historical analysis, the project focuses on painting – a medium with a long tradition of gendered hierarchies that has therefore been critically reassessed by feminist scholars – to demonstrate how queer women artists negotiated, subverted or reappropriated its conventions.
The project employs the term 'women' not as a fixed, biologically determined category, but in a way that is mindful of a spectrum of gender experiences, some of which may not have been publicly articulated in the first half of the twentieth century. The umbrella term 'queer women' refers to people who transgressed dominant heteronormative frameworks and lived – or contemplated – non-normative sexualities and gender identities at that time.
Case studies, conducted by the project leader and two doctoral researchers, will be accompanied by a range of scholarly activities designed to reflect on questions of terminology and to advance methodological approaches. These include an ongoing reading group, two international workshops, and an open-access co-edited volume.
 
The project leader focuses on Irène Zurkinden and Leonor Fini, while one doctoral researcher (already appointed) examines the work of Émilie Charmy. We invite applications for a second doctoral position to investigate one or several further queer women painters working in Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. Possible case studies for this dissertation project include, but are not limited to: Jeanne Mammen, Gertrude Sandmann, Lotte Laserstein, Anita Clara Rée, Gluck, Gwen John, Patricia Preece and Dorothy Hepworth, Tove Jansson and Tuulikki Pietilä, Gerda Wegener and Lili Elbe, and Jeanna Bauck and Bertha Wegmann.
 
The dissertation project will be supervised by Prof. Dr. Charlotte Matter, Laurenz Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art (first supervisor) and a second professor at the University of Basel (member of Group I, to be defined).