“‘Others’ of Various Kinds”: J. Vanessa Lyon on Intersectionality as an Early Modern Scholar

In the Foreground: Conversations on Art & Writing

In this episode Caroline Fowler (Starr Director of the Research and Academic Program at the Clark Art Institute) speaks with J. Vanessa Lyon, who is on the faculty at Bennington College, where she teaches the histories of art with an emphasis on gender, race, and post/colonial relationships in Spanish, Flemish, and Transatlantic visual representation. Vanessa speaks about the influence of her graduate studies in theology and how she views teaching as a politics of care. She also describes her experiences as a queer woman of color working on “Old Masters” like Rubens, and contemplates reverberations between early modern and contemporary art, particularly for artists of color.