Art History Professor Julia Guernsey on empowering women in the arts and room for improvement in representation
Teaching ancient Mesoamerican art history since 2001, Professor Julia Guernsey encourages students to collaborate and grow confident in sharing their ideas. Aiming to not only empower her students, Guernsey works to level the playing field for women in the arts. Guernsey spoke with the Department of Art and Art History about connecting to her students, goals for women in the field and creating a more inclusive environment at UT.
AAH: What is your hope for your women students?
Dr. Julia Guernsey: My hope is that they emerge from our program confident in their abilities to interpret and critique the world around them, and to confidently give voice to their thoughts and ideas. Art history provides so many tools for thinking about our world, both in the modern present and the ancient past. For women students, especially, I hope they can move through the world – whether of art or anything else, for that matter – and feel empowered to intellectually deconstruct and challenge the structures of power that surround us.
AAH: How did you come to art history and how has that path influenced your published work?
JG: Art history provided a way to think deeply about history, which had always interested me, but with an emphasis on objects and materialities. I was intrigued by histories that emphasized a world of images and their relationships. My books focus on the ancient past of Mesoamerica, and the sculpture, imagery and urban design of its ancient cities. They blend the world of the visual with archaeological data in an effort to anchor the artistic production of the era to particular contexts of use and meaning.
AAH: What are some of the main goals you wish to accomplish through your instruction in art history and connection with students?
JG: In my classes on ancient Mesoamerica, my goal is expose students to the vast and impressive legacy of Mesoamerican art and architecture. While in smaller classes, such as my Undergraduate Art Historical Methodologies, we explore the ways in which scholars – both established and emerging – approach the visual world in all of its diversity. My classes tend to emphasize discussion and writing, which are necessary skills in the world of art history. They are also opportunities for students to express their own ideas about and reactions to the material that we are studying.
AAH: What do you hope for the future at UT as it pertains to women students and the art department?
JG: It’s great to have our first woman Chair in the Department of Art and Art History. That was a very, very, very long time coming. We have a ways to go, in my estimation. But, that said, we have no lack of accomplished and powerful female faculty and students, both undergraduate and graduate, so the future is bright.
Associate Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture Stephennie Mulder on the historical influence of Islamic art and advice for women in the arts field
As with many of her own students, Stephennie Mulder, associate professor of Islamic art and architecture, realized over the course of her undergraduate studies that there was a gap in her own knowledge of global history. She was well-versed in the achievements of European art and knew ancient China, India and the Americas had rich pasts, “but somehow Islamic art was a blank for me, aside from a collection of terrible stereotypes about tents, camels and the desert.
“Yet, in the medieval and early modern period, Islamic empires controlled the center of Afro-Eurasia for over a thousand years, profoundly shaping the art of Asian, African and European art and culture (and eventually the art of the Americas, too).”
Mulder would come to specialize in Islamic art and work as the head ceramicist at Balis for over ten years; and ultimately widening her focus to include conservation of antiquities and cultural heritage sites. Mulder spoke with the Department of Art and Art History about her journey to the field of Islamic art and shared advice for women in the art field.
AAH: How did you become interested in art history and conservation?
Dr. Stephennie Mulder: Islam today is the world’s second-largest religion and has always been global, diverse and immensely complex.
When people ask me, “How did you get interested in Islamic art?” – as a non-Muslim, I get this question a lot – I usually think, “How could you not be interested in Islamic art?” It is literally the only artistic tradition that allows you to simultaneously study every corner of the earth from late Antiquity to the present.
I came to conservation later. Having worked for many years as an archaeologist and art historian in Syria, the events of 2014-15 (when the militant group ISIS began to destroy monuments in the region), felt very personal. This was especially so when ISIS came to occupy my own archaeological site, bulldozing it in the name of their distorted interpretation of Islam. I always remind people who believe ISIS’s claims that they destroyed cultural heritage “in the name of Islam” that they are believing the claims of an international criminal terrorist network. These monuments stood untouched, or in some cases were restored and cared for, for over 1,400 years as dozens of Muslim dynasties controlled the region. I became interested in the world of cultural heritage preservation and management as a result of these tragic events, eventually leading me to a new research direction and the founding of my UT Austin campus group Antiquities Action.
AAH: What are some of the main goals you wish to accomplish through your instruction in art history and connection with students?
SM: We live in the most image-saturated moment in human history. You will see more images in a single hour than pre-modern people would have seen in a lifetime. Art history and the analytical and thinking skills it teaches have never been more relevant. I care a lot about teaching critical thinking through visual analysis and clear, well-organized writing, because I think these are tools that equip students for a variety of future professions and that enable them to be nimble, flexible thinkers and not to accept what they are told at face value. But honestly? These are skills that go way beyond getting a job: these are skills we need in order to be good citizens and to live together in democratic societies. I hope students leave my classes more curious than when they came in, with the idea that they can question and challenge received ideas about the past and that understanding the past is essential in order to shape the future. We make the future out of our ideas about the past. Art history teaches us how to do that thoughtfully, critically and empathetically.
AAH: Why is it necessary to uplift other women artists and art historians?
SM: Despite the advances of the past 100+ years of feminism, we are not there yet. Women still face countless challenges, whether in academia, museums or in the art world. From fewer leadership roles, to lower pay, to unequal family care responsibilities, to overt discrimination and lack of public recognition on the same level as our male counterparts, these are ongoing realities for many of us. I grew up in a religious family in which gender roles were strictly defined in religious faith. It took me years to see beyond those and imagine myself an equal to the men around me. Several women helped me to see my potential at pivotal points in my life, and I really hope to do that for the women who come after me.
AAH: How did you learn to deal with imposter syndrome as a woman in this field?
SM: I was lifted up by many people. Parents, relatives and teachers, among them several important women, helped me see myself with clear eyes and cared enough to hold me to those standards, which I often couldn’t see in myself. I still struggle with imposter syndrome. It’s kind of like my annoying friend these days. But it’s much less dominant than it used to be. Sometimes I actively tell myself “that person is not an idiot. If they say they see this in me, it has to be true.” Some days it’s kind of an act of faith, to be honest – like talking to my irritating alter-ego. Fake it until you make it. There really is something in acting the role you want to land.
AAH: What is your hope for your women students in the arts field?
SM: Stop apologizing. How many times do you begin a sentence with “I’m sorry…I’m sure this is totally off but…maybe this is not right but...”? Stop that. I mean, definitely apologize if you have hurt someone. But otherwise? Stop apologizing and just say the thing. Try it – it’s very empowering.