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Art Historian Publishes on Visualizing Queer Kinship

Adoption & Culture (Vol. 8, No. 1, 2020), published by Ohio State University Press.

Dr. Lucy Curzon, associate professor of art history, published an article on contemporary photography and queer kinship, titled “MaPa Del: Visualizing Queer Kinship,” in the 2020 issue of the journal, Adoption & Culture (Vol. 8, No. 1, 2020), published by Ohio State University Press. Curzon was also guest editor for the issue (titled Visual Adoptions), and wrote the introduction, “Visualizing Kinship: Politics, Challenges, Opportunities.”

The article examines a recent series of photographs by intersex artist and activist, Del LaGrace Volcano, titled MaPa Del. “These images of Volcano’s children and home life successfully visualize queer kinship beyond the shadow of biogenetics,” Curzon explained. “Volcano’s images are exemplary in this regard because they actively deconstruct what I define as the bionormative gaze.”

Dr. Lucy Curzon
Dr. Lucy Curzon

Dr. Curzon teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on modern and contemporary art, contemporary practice and community engagement, and is director of Graduate Studies for Art History. Curzon’s current research focuses on national identity and visual culture, particularly relating to the interwar, wartime and early postwar periods in Great Britain. She received the Historians of British Artist Book Award for Exemplary Scholarship on the Period after 1800 for her book, Mass-Observation and Visual Culture: Depicting Everyday Lives in Britain (Routledge).

For more information about The University of Alabama’s programs in art history and studio art, visit our Degree Programs page.