Emily Elizabeth Goodman, Ph.D.
Art Historian, Critic, and Curator
Emily Elizabeth Goodman is a Lexington, KY-based art historian, critic, and curator, and an Assistant Professor of Art History at Transylvania University.
About Me
As an art historian, I am many things; I am a teacher, a writer, a curator, and a critic.
I believe firmly in the power of art not simply to reflect the course of history but to change it. I engage with this central philosophy through the various threads of my work.
In my teaching practice, I implore students to see how art is connected to the world around them and to that of previous generations. In my courses, we examine not only the aesthetic conditions of various works of art, but also the social, political, and economic factors that contributed to their creation and how these pieces have been incorporated — or in many cases, excluded — from the dominant canon of art. We consider how artists have used their work for political purposes, and how others (governments, religious institutions, wealthy patrons, etc.) have employed these works to different end. And we consider the implications of how these images continue to be used today, examining how various works have been translated or appropriated for new purposes, building visual literacy in analyzing the significance of particular forms of art.
My scholarship examines the effects of the social and political conditions of the United States on the status of women artists. Using an interdisciplinary approach – drawing on research from Gender Studies, American Studies, and Food Studies – I consider the myriad intersectional factors that impact women’s art practices on an individual and systemic level. In so doing, my scholarship provides an in-depth and nuanced approach to the study of feminist art and women’s art history. Moreover, in examining the conditions that have functioned to promote and hinder women’s artistic production, my research posits potential solutions to the systemic inequality facing women and artists from other under-represented groups. Through illustrating the necessity of socially engaged art, collaborative practices, and alternative art spaces in combatting racial and gender inequality, my work aims to help to facilitate greater diversity within the arts.
Finally, in my work as a critic and curator I seek to use art to benefit society by challenging regional assumptions about the nature of American art through highlighting the work of artists in the South and Midwest. Moreover, I consider how the context of this region informs the understanding of artists’ practices that appear in local spaces. Similarly, I use these practices to consider the role of race, gender, class, sexuality, and age within contemporary art, connecting the historical arguments I trace in my teaching and scholarship to the practice of art now.
Scholarship
Peer-Reviewed Publications
March 22, 2018
“Sweet and Sour and Super-t-art: The Conflation of Gustatory and Sexual Appetites in the Work of Hannah Wilke,”
Performance Research (Vol 22, Issue 3)
This article examines how Hannah Wilke explored the relationship between sexual and gustatory taste in her performance Super-T-Art (1974), which she created for Jean Dupuy’s event Soup & Art held at the Kitchen in New York City. I argue that Wilke critiqued the ways in which women’s bodies are rendered passive objects for consumption by the male gaze through her performance — in which she enacted a series of gestures through which she wrapped and re-wrapped her naked body in a white drape while adopting poses taken from the history of western art and mass culture. As such, I assert, Wilke challenged the notion that women’s only position in the sexual exchange was that of consumable entity.
Teaching
Course Descriptions from Recent Classes
ARTH 3124/WGS 3134: Women in Art
Winter 2017, Winter 2019, Winter 2021
This upper level course examines the history of women artists within the Western tradition from the Italian Renaissance to the present day. In particular, this course examines the challenges facing women artists both in their career and the historiography surrounding their practices.
ARTH 2444: Modern Art
Fall 2016, Fall 2018, Fall 2020
This upper level course examines the history of Western art from 1870-1970, focusing particularly on the development of new media, movements, and techniques arising from industrial modernization.
ARTH 2164: American Art
Fall 2017, Winter 2020
This course considers the history of American Art from the Colonial Period to the present day. Drawing on the Howard Zinn model of U.S. history, this class focuses on the politics and visual culture of various moments in the lives of Americans, including but not limited to the abolitionism, the labor movements of the 19th and 20th centuries, Civil Rights activism, feminism, and the LGBTQIA movements both pre- and post- Stonewall.
ARTH 1114: Art History: Ancient to Gothic and ARTH 1124: Art History: Renaissance to Modern
Fall 2016- present
These introductory survey courses consider the history of Western Art, starting with the Neolithic Revolution of the Ancient Near East in the Fall semester and concluding with Pop Art and Conceptual Art in America in the Winter. In these courses, we not only consider canonical works of art, but also the implications of these art objects and their study/display today.
ARTH 2174: Art and the Internet
Winter 2019, Fall 2020
This course examines the history of the internet and its relationship to the arts. In this course students practice consuming, commenting on, and creating their own works of digital media to fully understand how web-enabled technologies have interfaced with the arts over the last 30 years.