The art history professor's paper, "This Woman Artist Who Is Not One," served as a manifesto against cisnormativity in the scholarly study of historical figures.
Kirstin Ringelberg, professor of art history, presented a paper at the Feminist Art History Conference. Forming part of the framework for a forthcoming book, Ringelberg argued that Madeleine Lemaire (1845-1928) might best be understood as non-binary or gender fluid, despite the assumptions past scholars have made in reading Lemaire as a woman.
The conference, a standalone competitive feminist conference hosted by American University, was funded through the support of Robin D’Alessandro and Jane Fortune, and was initially created by feminist art historians Norma Broude and Mary Garrard. Ringelberg’s former students Nichole Rawlings ’10 (Art History major, Honors Fellow, and Lumen Prize Recipient) and Caitlin Glosser ’12 (Art History and French majors, Elon College Fellow) both attended American University for master’s degrees in art history, and are now successfully pursuing careers in the field.