Arts and Humanities Faculty Researcher Development Programme

Visualising Identity: a seminar

Dr Beccy Kennedy, Senior Lecturer in Art

Date: 26 April

Time: 15.30 – 16.30

Location: Open space on Righton first floor.

Identity has become something of a dirty word in both political and scholarly spheres, for its benignity or for its potential diversion away from class-based politics in an increasingly plutocratic world.

This seminar will explore Identity more positively as both a cultural and an intersectionally political concept, looking at how and why it is still relevant to visual practices today.

Within this overview, I will touch upon: the mid to late 20thC Identity Politics movement, sociological and psychological notions of identity construction and identity discourses as 'conflict perspectives,' in relation to gender and race.

By thinking about identity through focusing on key cultural concepts, theories and recent historical movements, or in terms of your own psychological relationship to your work, it can form part of a valuable conceptual framework or methodology for researchers working in arts practice and visual culture - regardless of whether Identity Politics is an integral part of your research.