Dealing With Degas: Representations of Women and the Politics of Vision

Leading scholars offer new readings of Degas representations of the family, prostitution, city life & leisure in which looking at women is shown to be a complex & ambiguous process. One major topic of the book is the encounter between feminism & art history. Having put images of women on the agenda of cultural analysis, feminist interventions in the theory & analysis of representation have created a diverse & intricate field of interpretation which now supersedes that formulation. These essays challenge art history to confront issues of spectatorship, the interface of class & gender, identification & the politics of vision. This illustrated collection is thus a major contribution to debates on representation & sexuality.