Picturing Women

Type of Resource: Research Resources, Teacher Tools and Information, Online Activities, Student tools and information
Free or Fee: Free
Computer Needs: Quicktime
Link: Visit the Site!

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Recommendation:

This site provides good information organized into four themes on a contemporary topic. The images are of good quality and the interactive components instigate critical thinking. The exhibit was available in several locations in Pennsylvania in 2004. The discussion forum on the site has not been utilized since then, but is the only part of the site that seems to be dated to the exhibit. Be aware that some of the historical representations of women contain full or partial nudity which may not be appropriate for some students. By sharing the site on a projector, teachers can control which images students view.

Description:

The online Picturing Women exhibit explores the contemporary representations and self-representations of women. From the website: "Curated by Susan Shifrin, a Visiting Fellow at Bryn Mawr's Center for Visual Culture, Curator of Education at the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College, and Visiting Assistant Professor of Art History at Ursinus, the Picturing Women exhibition juxtaposed historical works with 20th- and 21st-century art to promote dialogue about the representation and self-representation of female identity. The exhibition's nearly 200 works spanned the 15th through the 21st centuries, presenting photographic, printed, and painted portraits along with such diverse cultural artifacts as conduct manuals, historical costume, literary portrait sketches, advertising images, caricatures, silhouettes and contemporary installation pieces. "'The Picturing Women project,' says Shifrin, 'reaches across institutional, chronological, disciplinary, gendered and racial lines to explore crucial questions about what constitutes female identity. The project looks at how female identities have been constructed in images, artifacts, and texts and what roles such artifacts have played in defining how women have been 'pictured' historically and how they are 'pictured' today.'"

Possible uses:

This site provides resources for teachers and students studying images in media. Resources, including lesson plans and reading lists, are available. Students can research and participate in the five interactive experiences to further their thinking. From the website: "Since the intent of the Picturing Women project is to raise questions about the nature of gender and representations of all kinds, the images on this site lend themselves to student research and reflection. The themes of Figuring, Fashioning, Portraiting, and Telling are adaptable across the disciplines and students can use both the images and themes to uncover the relationship between the cultural constraints of time periods and the origins of resistance. Everything from early anatomical drawings of women to high fashion dictates provide areas for critical thinking, particularly at a time when pre-teens and adolescents are bombarded daily with images that attempt to define them and their gender."

Related Resources:

6-8, 9-12+

Language Arts
Social Studies
Media Education
Social Curriculum
Social Studies : History
Social Studies : Sociology
Social Studies : Cultures

Research Resources, Teacher Tools and Information, Online Activities, Student tools and information

Quicktime