CROSSROADS IN CULTURAL STUDIES
Fourth International Conference
June 29 - July 2, 2002, Tampere, Finland

Looking into Visual Culture: Issues of Women and Gender

Organiser: Joanne Leonard

Washington, Stacy L. (University of Michigan, USA) IMAGING AN AFRICAN AMERICAN IDENTITY: THE CONCEPTUALIZATION OF A COMMUNITY IDENTITY THROUGH REPRESENTATIONAL STRUGGLE
This paper combines two of Stacy Washington's primary interests: cultural articulations of identity and historiographical methodology. Her work draws connections between contemporary critical theories of identity politics; agency and resistance surrounding cultural production; and historical studies dealing with the formation of an African American community ethos and identity. Engaging the works of bell hooks, Hazel Carby, Cornel West, Robin Kelley, Lawrence Levine, Sterling Stuckley, Elsa Barkley-Brown and John Vlach, she suggests that early African American cultural production (here African American women's quilting) served as an alternative form of historical record keeping. Along a historical trajectory, 20th -century cultural production can be seen as a part of a community ethos; a legacy of identity articulation within contexts of resistance and agency. Ms. Washington believes that the challenge of academia, in the 21st-century, is to move methodology and pedagogy forward without ignoring current historical foundations. As scholars, we must begin to accept new forms into the canon of historical record; to de-privilege current hegemony, without invalidating or devaluing it, to develop new areas of academic investigation by engaging established disciplines.

Karlsen, Carol (University of Michigan, USA) AFTER SALEM: READING WITCH IMAGES IN ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES AFTER 1700
Representations of witches are as commonplace in early twenty-first-century popular and political culture in the United States as they were in late seventeenth-century religious culture. Most of the earlier images came from England?s or New England?s written texts or were presented to audiences as sermons. Today most are produced by Hollywood and the advertising industry as visual texts presented to audiences as mass entertainment. While the gendered meanings of witch production have clearly changed over time, some remain remarkably consistent. Focusing on the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and looking at both British and American images, this panel presentation assesses how the witch image was transformed through ongoing religious preoccupation with unruly women and the emergence of fictional witches in fairy tales and other children?s and adult literature. It explores how the contemporary cultural narrative of the witch in the United States is rooted in the visual and written language artists and writers created to simultaneously deny and affirm witches? existence.

Pegler Gordon, Anna (University of Michigan, USA) GENDERED VISIONS OF CHINESE IMMIGRANTS IN THE EXCLUSION ERA
Starting in 1882, the Chinese exclusion laws were the first U.S. immigration laws to discriminate against a group of immigrants solely on the basis of their race and class. As recent feminist analyses have shown, gender also played a key role in the administration of exclusion. This paper considers the gendered perspective of Chinese exclusion through the previously unexplored archive of photographic identity documents. Looking at these images and the accompanying immigration investigations, we can see the intersection of race, class and gender in the Immigration Bureau's construction of ideas about Chinese immigrants. At the same time, these studio photographs taken under the direction of the immigrants, illustrate immigrant resistance to both their representation and regulation by the Immigration Bureau.

Jacobsen, Carol (University of Michigan, USA) BARRED AND GAGGED
As Gayle Rubin warned feminists 20 years ago, the price we pay for shying away from making and critiquing images that address difficult and marginalized sex practices like prostitution, S/M, cross-generational sex, and children?s sexuality is that we hand over definition of these subjects to right wing conservatives and watch our hard won rights erode. Even worse is the price we pay for allowing certain groups of women to be scapegoated and criminalized for owning their personal, sexual or political autonomy: we place all of our freedom in jeopardy. But feminist artists who attempt to make visible such sexual marginalization or criminalization are too often brought into costly encounters with the law themselves. This presentation will present several examples of artists whose practices have confronted both censorship and criminalization, as well as a short video of criminalized women whose experiences are censored.