Women, Agency, and Architecture in the Premodern World, session at the 78th Annual Meeting of SECAC, Baltimore, MD, October 26–29, 2022

The Maryland Institute College of Art is excited to act as the institutional host for the 78th annual meeting of SECAC in Baltimore, MD, from October 26-29, 2022. Based at the Renaissance Baltimore Harborplace Hotel and informed by the theme Watershed, the conference seeks to foster thoughtful analyses of the myriad intersections between art, art history, education, and social and environmental justice. All submissions must be made through the SECAC submission portal.

This session invites proposals taking a panoramic view of women and architecture prior to the eighteenth century, and welcomes work on a broad range of geographies and temporalities. Although current scholarship continues to reveal the nuanced ways in which premodern women across socioeconomic strata engaged with architecture and the built environment, many critical facets of their engagement remain unstudied. The papers in this session move beyond updating the art historical canon to expanding our knowledge of how premodern women meaningfully contributed to their physical environments, from rural to urban and suburban. Topics of interest may include: women as architects or contributors to architectural design, women as patrons and benefactors of architecture, and women’s administration of architecture and communal spaces. Bringing these and related topics into conversation will further establish the significant role of women in shaping their surroundings across time and space.

Session chairs
Brittany Forniotis, Duke University
Dana Hogan, Duke University