ECR French Nineteenth-Century Art Network Research Forum:

Developing New Feminist Methods: Sexism, Misogyny, and Modern Art

Dr. Allison Leigh, University of Louisiana at Lafayette

Thursday 10 December 2026

1800 (CET) // 1700 (GMT) // 1200 (EST) // 0900 (PST)

In the last hundred years, art history canonized several nineteenth- and early twentieth-century painters who made artworks with a similar essential content. From paintings showing women being gruesomely murdered by Eugène Delacroix to the erotically charged depictions that Paul Gauguin made of his teenage Polynesian brides—much of what is now considered the best modern art focused on either violent or degrading depictions of women. This Research Forum will reveal the research and writing processes behind a novel investigation of how diverse forms of contempt directed at women came to saturate the art world. Professor Allison Leigh will share how her forthcoming book, The Misogynists: A Reckoning With Modern Art, emerged from her experiences teaching undergraduates. She will also discuss her application of a renewed feminist lens, one that sees the pervasiveness of misogyny as inherent to  the art historical canon.

Allison Leigh is the SLEMCO and Board of Regents Support Fund Endowed Professor in Art at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. She is a specialist in European and Russian art of the long nineteenth century and the author of Picturing Russia’s Men: Masculinity and Modernity in 19th-Century Painting (Bloomsbury, 2020) as well as the co-editor of Russian Orientalism in a Global Context: Hybridity, Encounter, and Representation (Manchester University Press, 2023). A recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, her forthcoming book titled The Misogynists: A Reckoning With Modern Art will be published by Abrams in November.