Biography

Emilie Blanc is a doctoral student in art history at the University of Rennes 2 (EA Histoire et Critique des Arts) in France. Her main area of research is contemporary art, and particularly the relation between art and politics. She is developing a dissertation project on American art entitled “Representing Identity: Gender, Race, and Sexuality in 1970s California Art”. Her supervisor is Elvan Zabunyan. The research project will analyse the art practices in California during the 1970s which explore the issue of racial and/or sexual identity in articulation with the social movements which emerged in the United States at the end of the 1960s, like the Black Power, Chicano rights, feminist and gay rights movements. As a Visiting Student Researcher at UC Berkeley, she is sponsored by Julia Bryan-Wilson. This research trip is an opportunity mainly to consult archives and library collections, to interview people, such as art historians and artists, linked to her research subject, to meet UC Berkeley’s professors and students, and to attend some courses and conferences.