The first women students to attend Yale University were members of its School of Art. Assembled from hundreds of hours of interviews with notable women and non-binary graduates, this title presents the first history of a fabled if frequently misunderstood institution. The voices of 50 years of women graduates reveal the life of the art school and speaks plainly to the long and still ongoing struggle for feminist integration and representation in the arts.
Eminent feminist thinkers Marta Kuzma, Linda Nochlin and Angela Davis also weigh in on the school’s legacy. This sweeping narrative of the education of a continuum of women artists and designers traces its way through the incendiary politics of the radical ’60s, the formation of cultural studies, identity politics and intersectionality in the ’70s, the AIDS crisis, the culture wars and the neoliberal escalation of the ’80s, through to our fully globalised, hyper-capitalised present.