Teaching Assistant Professor Deirdre Smith's article exploring the concept of "zoomorphic feminism" in contemporary art was published in April in Art Journal. Through analysis of works by artists Wangechi Mutu, Julie Buffalohead, Marianna Simnett, Agnes Questionmark, and Juliana Huxtable, Smith takes note of a recent phenomenon where artists create and perform hybrid imagery combining feminine human bodies with nonhuman animal bodies as a means to a discourse of gender and identity. Thinking with Sylvia Wynter, Smith situates "zoomorphic feminism" as a sign of larger crises and conflicts of "the human" in the 21st century.
Read the article in Art Journal here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00043249.2026.2624349
Read Deirdre Smith's faculty profile here: https://haa.pitt.edu/people/deirdre-madeleine-smith