Known for her innovative sculptures of impressive scale, Sarah Sze utilizes paper, string, and various types of discarded or repurposed objects in her art. Recently the subject of a major exhibition “Infinite Line” at the Asia Society in New York City, Sze will represent the United States at the Venice Biennale in 2013. Born in Boston in 1969, Sze received her B.A. from Yale University and her M.F.A. from the School of Visual Arts in New York. Among the many awards she has received, Sze was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2005.

One of the major strengths of Sze’s work is her ability to defy expectations about the artistic process, often by breaking the rules. Not content with frames and pedestals, her works climb up and down the walls and jut out into the viewer’s space. Materiality is a defining characteristic of her work, as she uses found objects, trash, and temporary objects like painter’s tape.

In her show at the Asia Society, Sze’s large, mixed-media sculptures were paired with a selection of drawings and more intimate works on paper. At first glance, the differences between the two groups of works were jarring. The sculptures featured Sze’s customary use of found objects as well as site-specific details like the application of tape, paint, and writing directly on the museum walls and floors. Among the construction materials and objects, Sze included personal items such as credit cards with her name and plane tickets, which specifically connected the viewer to the artist.

Sze follows in the tradition of artists like Marcel Duchamp and Louise Bourgeois, who, through their use of unconventional materials, challenged the art world while challenging identity. Sze incorporates fragments of objects specific to her and her inner circle, but are instantly relatable as symbols of modern identity. Credit cards, airline information, receipts, and discarded scraps of paper all refer to the mundane events of everyday life. Yet, they also refer to the information age, and the large number of people and organizations that have access to personal accounts. Creating modern portraits, Sze encourages the viewer to reflect on the tiny pieces of paper that begin to stand in for important moments and life events.

In addition to her sculptural pieces, her investigation of others’ identities in her drawings is especially poignant. Here, she innovatively transforms personal life events like a pregnancy, a career highlight, and a wedding into architectural elements. Stacking individual memories on top of one another, she creates a biographical tower of her subject’s important moments in graphite. By including these small, specific details throughout her manipulation of space, Sze pulls back from her larger sculptures to focus on the details that define a person’s history.

While the specific, detailed objects often refer to transactions or transportation, the individual artworks themselves require thoughtful investigation and movement to see the intricacies that compose the drawing or sculpture. The viewer must negotiate the terrain of the work, which often begins to resemble a journey. Getting down to look at details on the floor, peering through windows and around walls, and moving in close to read some tiny text, the viewer must investigate the details of the works themselves. It is only then that the work slowly reveals itself.

But whose journey is the viewer experiencing? Is Sze creating a journey for the viewer? Or is it her journey the viewer is on? Does it even matter? With her sculptures, Sze creates an experience that will differ for every viewer-participant. What is remarkable about Sze’s work is that while they may be wedded to their location and installation, Sze creates an experience of not just viewing the work, but also of moving and engaging the work in a very specific way. The works become intricate worlds filled with lines and structures that push the viewer to move in and around the space.

Still Life with Landscape created for the High Line in New York in 2011 (and on display until June 2012) creates habit for a different consumer: birds and insects. The large construction resembles an architectural drawing realized in three dimensions, with various perches, mirrors, and green spaces integrated into the project. Sze even incorporated different types of food into the work, encouraging the birds’ engagement with the piece. Her purpose for creating the piece was to create a space that worked with the park, an abandoned railway track converted to green space. In this video, Sze explains, “I wanted the piece to really be like a site of experimentation, a place where something can happen or not. But the most essential thing really being that you would be reminded that there was the presence of these animals – birds, butterflies, bees – all over the park.” Sze is a conscientious artist who considers not just the environment where her works will be installed but also the way that they can be interacted with. Her selection for the Venice Biennale positions her as one of the best artists in the United States today, with good reason.

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The guide gives suggestions to journalists on looking for terms to describe female candidates, such as reversibility and parallelism (if there isn’t a male equivalent, or if the gendered terms used aren’t parallel, don’t use them).  For example, the adjective feisty is used only with those who would not normally be considered powerful.  Women can be feisty.  Children can be feisty.  Men generally are not.   If a media outlet does not normally discuss the hair style and color of male candidate’s hair then it shouldn’t discuss female candidate’s hair.

There are some case studies and suggestions for female candidates who find themselves the target of sexist attacks.   The guide also provides background research on the effect of gender oriented language on voters’ impressions of candidates.

While the guide focuses on female politicians, powerful women in all settings would benefit from the information provided.  Likewise, while it is aimed at the media, anyone in public relations or who speaks in public, especially as a corporate or organizational representative would find it useful.

Maximum length for manuscripts is 30 double-spaced pages. Submissions may be in any accepted ­academic format such as MLA, APA, Legal Bluebook, or Chicago Style but must be consistent ­throughout and carefully edited. Submissions must not be published elsewhere already. Also include a ­current copy of your CV and a 50-word bio.

For best consideration for our fall issue, please submit your materials by midnight, July 31, 2012, to submissions@academinist.org. You are welcome to submit after that date, though those submissions will be considered for our Spring 2013 issue or later.

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Blog posts can address feminism(s), feminist issues, women’s issues, and / or gender issues grounded in any disciplinary and / or theoretical perspective. Writers can take any perspective so long as it is well argued and well written, and that information is cited where necessary.

Within this large scope, we do have some general guidelines:

• Posts somehow must relate to feminism, feminist issues, women’s issues, and / or gender issues.
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We seek energetic people with a passion for feminist scholarship to help with handling our growing submission volume and with expanding the journal as it moves toward a regular publication cycle.

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Ryan, Christopher and Jetha, Cacilda.  Sex at Dawn:  The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality.  NY:  HarperCollins 2010

Both of these books concern, in large part, the place of women in prehistoric societies, but are viewed from different academic perspectives.  Taylor is an archaeologist; Ryan is a psychologist and married to Jetha, a psychiatrist.  The disciplinary difference is quite evident, as I will discuss later.

What both books agree on, and do so in no uncertain terms, is that hunter gatherer societies were more egalitarian in terms of sexual equality than the agricultural societies that replaced them in many parts of the world.   Both reject the theory that women exchanged sexual favors or chose sexual partners because of their ability to provide, thus making all women, to some degree, prostitutes.   Both disagree with the notion that hidden ovulation in human women developed so that human men would not know when they were fertile and thus would stay around longer.  Taylor points out the evidence that prehistoric and early agricultural and urban societies had knowledge of contraceptive plants.  Ryan and Jetha point out that prolonged breast feeding would inhibit ovulation and thus prevent frequent pregnancies.  In either view early human societies were more knowledgeable about reproduction than modern people traditionally acknowledge.  Both also mention the similarities and differences between human sexuality and that of other primates, though Ryan and Jetha do so in greater detail and more frequently.

Taylor focuses more on the history of the social construct of gender and Ryan and Jetha on the mechanics of human sexuality.  As an example, Taylor recounts the story of an item found in an archeological dig.  It was classified initially as a short sword, but when it was decided the body in the grave was a woman the object was reclassified as a weaving baton.  In this way modern views of gender affect our view of history.  Another example is the way phallic objects carved out of bone or wood are classified as batons or symbols of leadership or office, and not as sexual aids, even though some of them strongly resemble the artificial phalluses for sale in modern times.  A few other fascinating observations in his book are that the first tool was not likely to have been a spear or hunting item but a baby sling or carrying bag, and that fired pottery was initially used primarily to make weaning vessels.  He cites a study of Roman brothel coins that theorizes the numbers on one side of the coins indicate the cost of the acts represented on the other side of the coin.  The researcher cited asked prostitutes in a modern city to rank those same acts by degree of difficulty or how expensive they might be.  The modern women ranked them in the same order as the Romans did.

Ryan and Jetha write in a far less formal manner, often addressing the reader in colloquial terms.  They are more focused on the physical aspects of reproduction, such as the evolutionary reasons why women vocalize during sexual intercourse.  One of their theories is that this vocalization and other physiological systems imply that in prehistoric times women had sexual intercourse with several men sequentially.  Another theory is that men require young female lovers to stay sexually active.  There is no discussion of women, especially older women, needing young lovers.  An overarching theme is that monogamy is an awkward fit for the natural sexuality of humans.  The two writers, like Taylor, point out examples of how cultural beliefs can blind us.  One is that early European travelers to Australia thought the aborigines were starving, not because of their appearance, but because they were eating insects.  In fact the aboriginal diet was nutritious, but the Europeans could not comprehend anyone eating such things for food unless there were no other alternatives.  Ryan and Jetha also discuss sexual preference and posit that female sexual orientation is far more changeable than that of males.

Both of these books are interesting, though, personally, I found Taylor to be the more intriguing, perhaps due to a greater personal interest in anthropology than psychology.  Taylor’s reference to archeological artifacts such as Venus figurines and burial placements (for example, the Red Threesome, a burial of three people together in an unusual formation), as well as the general avoidance of discussing or acknowledging sexuality, such as evidence of rape, in archeological finds clearly demonstrates the way modern cultural mores color our view of the past.  Ryan and Jetha at times seem to reinforce cultural norms, as in the aforementioned discussion of young lovers for men but no reference to them for women.  The authors also discuss male interest in certain types of pornography without creating a visual image of the male viewers, but when they suggest the reverse they refer to “overweight middle-aged ladies with cheap tattoos, bad haircuts, and black socks …” (231).  It bothered me that the authors felt it necessary to visualize the female viewers but not the males, especially given the relatively negative imagery used.

Ryan and Jetha refer to Taylor’s work, and in a positive fashion.  Since Taylor wrote his book some years before theirs he could not return the academic salute.  Both books are interesting.  Readers may prefer one over the other depending on their academic background and personal interests.

Maximum length for manuscripts is 30 double-spaced pages. Submissions may be in any accepted ­academic format such as MLA, APA, Legal Bluebook, or Chicago Style but must be consistent ­throughout and carefully edited. Submissions must not be published elsewhere already. Also include a ­current copy of your CV and a 50-word bio. For best consideration for our spring issue, please submit your materials by midnight, January 31, 2012, to submissions@academinist.org

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Regimented systems such as prisons, college dormitories, even transit systems,  can insist that people publicly identify themselves (or be indentified against their will) as either male or female.  It is, in fact, almost impossible to go through life without being identified as one or the other.

Even in popular culture characters are identified as male or female.  An exception is Pat from “Saturday Night Live,” whose gender ambiguity was a source of humor.  More seriously, science fiction writer Jon Scalzi created a character in his novel Android Sheep, Sam Berlant, who gender is never provided.  Sam is clearly in a relationship with another character, Archie, who is indentified as male.    Scalzi deliberately didn’t assign Sam a gender.  In a blog post, “What Sex is Sam Berlant?” he writes that some people contacted him, irked because they didn’t know Sam’s gender and therefore didn’t know if Archie is heterosexual or homosexual.   Scalzi says he doesn’t know what gender Sam is.  Presumably Sam knows, as does Archie, but if anyone else in the book has noticed, they don’t mention it.

For the full article see  Adam L. Penenberg, “Neurofocus uses neuromarketing to hack your brain,” Fast Company, September 2011.