Gender in Southeast Asian art histories

This special issue of Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia, on the topic of gender and its intersections with art history, emerges and extends from numerous discussions held during the Gender in Southeast Asian Art Histories symposium, held at the University of Sydney in 2017. The event in Sydney was co-convened by Yvonne Low, Roger Nelson, Clare Veal and Stephen H. Whiteman, with invaluable support from numerous staff at the Power Institute and elsewhere in the University of Sydney. While we were inspired by the symposium in Sydney, this issue is emphatically not a conventional conference proceeding; we did not aspire for it to be a comprehensive record or to limit it to only or even chiefly the matters discussed there. Rather, as editors we have taken the Sydney event as one among several points of departure. A number of contributors to this special issue were presenters in Sydney and have substantially reworked their research for publication here. Several other contributors did not attend the symposium, but have been invited to contribute their work as it complicates, extends, challenges or even productivel