Editorial: Body & Gender Politics in Visual Culture

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) Women’s Caucus (2012-2014), NAEA Distinguished Fellow Class of 2013, and 2012 Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Gender Studies at Alpen-Adria-Universität 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 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 Women’s Caucus from 1998-2000, and president of LGBTIQ from 2001-2003.