Becky Bivens’s research and teaching focuses on modern and contemporary art, with an emphasis on abstract art, aesthetics, and gender studies. Since 2010, she has taught art history surveys, art criticism, modern and postwar American Art, philosophy of art, history of photography, and gender studies. Before coming to Sweet Briar, she served as Kirk Visiting Professor of Art History at her alma mater, Agnes Scott College.
Courses Taught
Women and Art
The Land as Art
Art of Africa and the African Diaspora
Publications
“An Unlikely Match: Modernism and Feminism in Lynda Benglis’ Contraband,” Arts, “Topical Abstraction in Contemporary Sculpture” (2024)
“The V-Girls: The Authentic Subject after Post-structuralism,” in View: Theories and Practice of Visual Culture 15 (2017)
“If I could love consciously”–a phrase from the feminist critic Chris Kraus–is the mantra of my teaching philosophy. Students develop a granular vocabulary to describe and analyze what they see and sense, allowing them to become more perceptive and analytic about the significance of artworks and the ideas that motivate their emotional and aesthetic experience. My lectures emphasize intellectual history and often attend to broadly humanistic themes, such as the mind and body, reason, creativity, love, and tragedy. Because structuring a space for students to find their voice is a priority in my teaching, I rely on experiential learning projects (often incorporating collections research and curation into my teaching) and draw on my undergraduate background in studio art to encourage experimentation as students gain an education that is liberal yet practical. Students learn about history, build useful skills for their future careers, and articulate their strengths. My own sensibility is playful but also philosophical; as such, my teaching is informed by humor as well as my training in aesthetic theories from the Enlightenment to the present. Finally, I lecture and assign materials that conceive of modernity as a worldwide social project whose effects, from industrialization to secularism and globalization, have distinct impacts across cultures and historical periods.