The history of early modern printmaking has long centered on male artists, leaving the contributions of women largely overlooked and insufficiently theorized. Yet ongoing archival research and recent scholarship continue to recover names, works, and forms of labor that unsettle the conventional picture of how prints were made, circulated, and valued.
Across Europe and beyond, women participated in the world of intaglio and woodcut not only as inheritors of family trades but also as brilliant amateurs or anonymous contributors to the devotional image economy. Their presence complicates neat distinctions between art and craft, genius and labor, public and private spheres.
This session invites papers that center the work of early modern women printmakers (c. 1450–1700) in any geographic context. We welcome close readings of individual artists and works, as well as methodological or historiographic interventions that reflect on how and why women’s labor as printmakers has remained so difficult to see.
Possible questions include—but are not limited to:
• How did women access the training, tools, or networks of printmaking?
• What kinds of images were women printmakers asked to produce—or found themselves producing—and how were these works received?
• In what roles did women participate in workshop economies, and what forms of collective labor supported their production?
• What critical frameworks might allow us to better apprehend this history and the absences that define it?
The papers, in English, should be 20 minutes in length. Scholars at any stage of their career are encouraged to apply.
Please send the following materials to Emanuele Lugli, elugli@stanford.edu, and Rhoda Eitel-Porter, editor@printquarterly.co.uk by July 25, 2025:
• Paper title and Abstract (400 word max)
• Full name, current affiliation, and email address
• Curriculum vitae (no more than 2 pages)
Notifications of acceptance will be sent by August 4, 2025.
For additional information, visit: https://www.rsa.org/forms/FormResponseView.asp?id=EAB7CB8E-61ED-441F-A1C6-C2C7CBAB55E5
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