Art and Gender in an Age of Revolution

This talk by Professor Simon Partner (History, Duke University) will be based on the life of Kawai Koume, an artist and housewife in a bushi family in Kishūdomain who kept a diary from the 1830s till the 1880s. Koume's diary offers a window into life in a scholarly middle-class family before and after the Meiji Restoration.

The talk will focus on the social economy of Koume's artistic production - who she painted for, what rewards she got, and how the transformations of Japan's society and economy following the Meiji Restoration affected her work.

Discussant: Gennifer Weisenfeld, Professor, Art, Art History and Visual Studies, Duke.