Editorial: From Womb to Nurkan Valtraus

Karen Keifer-Boyd; Deborah Smith-Shank

Karen Keifer-Boyd The Pennsylvania State University
Deborah Smith-Shank The Ohio State University

Abstract

Visual Culture & Gender (VCG) has come to term and we are proud, delighted, and eager to share our baby with the world. There are numerous people to thank, especially the authors, editorial board, supportive friends throughout North America and Europe, and the administrators of Northern Illinois University for their support. We greatly appreciate Hui-Chun Hsiaoâ€™s assistance with the design template.

Our co-editorship is a collaboration with equal division of tasks and all decisions of a joint nature. For volume one, we list our names alphabetically and will rotate the order in each subsequent volume. Our editorial is also a collaboration with Deborah Smith-Shankâ€™s words of her specific experiences in purple font and Karen Keifer-Boydâ€™s words in green font. Where we desire to diffuse to whom the text belongs we use black font. The ease of color text and more importantly images in color, and in inserting hyperlinks, video, and podcasts is a hallmark of online journals. One of our goals is to push this potential of multimedia in online publishing as we have begun with the video clips from the films of a German feminist filmmaker, Ula StÃ¶ckl, analyzed in Claudia Schippertâ€™s article.

Our second goal with the journal is to further its accessibility and inclusion of international perspectives. In this volume, Kryssi Staikidis provides us with perspectives of Mayan women artists. Miwon Choe explores her Korean family history and tells a personal and traumatic story of her great aunt, a remarkable artist and woman. Marissa McClure Vollrath, Linda Hoeptner-Poling, Viki D. Thompson Wylder, and John Warren Oakes provide different generational perspectives in the United States from young girls of contemporary times, to an art educator and artist who began their careers at the forming of second wave feminism, and going further back to the impact of the 1940s GI Bill on the education of women artists. In future issues, we hope to have several articles in more than one language so that readers can select their most comfortable language for reading the article. Reviewing, revisions, and editing will still be first completed in English prior to the translation.

A third goal is to introduce artists and art that concern visual culture and gender, and further to have the art essay section serve as a site that encourages diverse styles and voices. Our inaugural volume begins this endeavor with the passionate perspectives of Future Akins-Tillett, K. B. Basseches, Barbara Bickel, and Cory W. Peeke. Cory Peekeâ€™s art essay begins to erode the absence of publications that recognize the work and ideas of gay, lesbian, and transgendered artists and writers.

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Author Biographies

Karen Keifer-Boyd, The Pennsylvania State University

Karen Keifer-Boyd, Ph.D., is professor of art education and women's, gender, and sexuality studies at the Pennsylvania State University. She is past president of the National Art Education Association (NAEA) Womenâ€™s Caucus (2012-2014), NAEA Distinguished Fellow Class of 2013, and 2012 Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Gender Studies at Alpen-Adria-UniversitÃ¤t Klagenfurt, Austria. She serves on the Art Education Research Institute Steering Committee; on the Council for Policy Studies; and as past coordinator of the Caucus on Social Theory. She is co-founder and co-editor of Visual Culture & Gender, and has served on 15 editorial and review boards. She has been honored with leadership and teaching awards, including two Fulbright Awards (2006 in Finland and 2012 in Austria) and the 2013 Edwin Ziegfeld Award. Her writings on feminist pedagogy, visual culture, inclusion, cyberart activism, transcultural dialogues, action research, social justice arts-based research, and identity are in more than 50 peer-reviewed research publications, and translated into several languages. She co-authored Including Difference: A Communitarian Approach to Art Education in the Least Restrictive Environment (NAEA, 2013); InCITE, InSIGHT, InSITE (NAEA, 2008); Engaging Visual Culture (Davis, 2007); co-edited Real-World Readings in Art Education: Things Your Professors Never Told You (Falmer, 2000); and served as editor of the Journal of Social Theory in Art Education and guest editor for Visual Arts Research. She is coordinator of the Judy Chicago Art Education Collection.

Deborah Smith-Shank, The Ohio State University

Deborah L. Smith-Shank received a Ph.D. from Indiana University in 1992, and served as Chair of the Department of Arts Administration, Education and Policy (formerly knows as Art Education) at The Ohio State University. She is also Emeritus Professor of Art at Northern Illinois University, where she served as Head of the Art Education program. Smith-Shank has taught K-12 art, as well as undergraduate and graduate students for more than 30 years. Her research is involved with artifacts of visual / material culture and social justice examined through semiotic and feminist lenses. She has published more than 100 articles and has presented her work internationally in venues including Australia, Northern Ireland, Finland, Portugal, Brazil, Chile, Canada, Croatia, Japan, Hungary, Slovenia, Turkey, Cyprus, The Netherlands, Belgium, and the United States. Smith-Shank and is co-editor and founder of the journal of Visual Culture & Gender, an international, freely accessed, multimedia juried journal (http://vcg.emitto.net/). She is a Fellow of the National Art Education Association and currently serves as elected Vice President of the International Society for Education Through Art (http://www.insea.org/), and Treasurer of the United States Policy for Council Studies in Art Education. She previously served the National Art Education Association as president of the Womenâ€™s Caucus from 1998-2000, and president of LGBTIQ from 2001-2003.