Syllabi have always responded to the world around them. The social and political implications of what is taught shape both the kinds of art that are made and the art worlds people experience. This paper introduces the work of the Art History for Art Programmes Network through feminist and activist approaches to rewriting the syllabus. The network brings together art historians and educators to explore the teaching, learning and assessment of art and design histories for practice-based art students in higher education. Drawing on the network’s conversations, we ask what critical and contextual studies can offer in helping students negotiate the art world today.
Dr Elizabeth Johnson is Senior Lecturer in Critical and Contextual Studies at the Cambridge School of Art, Anglia Ruskin University. Her research concerns sculpture studies and the intersection between art and technology since 1960. She is currently completing a book investigating how contemporary artists have harnessed digital technologies to imagine a more responsive and equitable culture of public monuments. She also researches and writes on artists’ holograms. Her writing has been published in journals including Cultural Politics, Sculpture Journal and Archives of American Art Journal.
Dr Rachel Warriner is Vice-Chancellor's Fellow and Assistant Professor in the School of Design, Arts and Creative Industries at Northumbria University. Her research examines the politics of art’s production, considering feminist challenges to art’s institutions, the role culture plays in conflict, and the politics of gender and sexuality in the art world. Publications include Pain and Politics in Postwar Feminist Art: Activism in the Work of Nancy Spero (Bloomsbury, 2023) as well as work in Art History, The Oxford Art Journal, The Irish University Review, and Courtauld Books Online.
This talk is part of the 2025-26 CRVC research theme, The Art of the Syllabus.