In Her Own Words: A Primary Source Book of Autobiographical Texts by Women Artists in the 19th and 20th Centuries gives voice to sixteen influential women artists, providing students with a highly personal lens through which they can analyze and interpret each artist's visual works. The material progresses chronologically to better situate the artistic and literary works of the featured women within a coherent cultural framework.
The Introduction to the book defines the genres of self-narratives and assists the reader in the development of interpretive strategies for comprehending primary sources. Within each chapter, students read about an individual artist/author, learning about her life, the historical significance of her work, and the subject matter and stylistic idiom of her visual art and written texts. Readers then explore autobiographical narratives, journal and diary entries, and letters-works that illuminate each artist's early sense of artistic vocation, her creative process, her position on marriage and motherhood, her attitudes toward recognition, popular success, and the public persona of the artist, and her political beliefs and opinions on contemporary feminist movements.
Women artists featured include Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Harriet Hosmer, Rosa Bonheur, Berthe Morisot, Marie Bashkirtseff, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Käthe Kollwitz, Georgia O'Keeffe, Frida Kahlo, Louise Nevelson, Elizabeth Catlett, Carolee Schneeman, Alice Neel, Judy Chicago, Faith Ringgold, and Louise Bourgeois.
Featuring accessible and engaging narratives that contextualize and bring women artists' works to life, In Her Own Words is an ideal collection for courses in art history, gender studies, women's literature, and creative writing.
