La thèse intitulée "Mobility, Vagabondage, and the Claiming of Modern African American Diasporic Identity " ou en français " La Mobilité et le Vagabondage dans l'Affirmation de l'Identité Afro-Américaine et Diasporique Moderne " explore les concepts de Vagabond et de mobilité urbaine et sociale en lien avec la littérature et l'identité afro-américaines. Le concept de vagabondage, considéré comme un élément clé pour capturer la complexité de l'expérience noire au sein d'une époque d'urbanisation et de mobilité croissantes aux États-Unis, est appréhendé de manière plus profonde et adaptée aux deux protagonistes des romans sélectionnés. Ces personnages, issus des romans de Nella Larsen et James Weldon Johnson, offrent une base analytique idéale pour étudier les aspirations de l'identité afro-américaine et leur position dans la modernité, tout en s'inscrivant dans le cadre de l'inégalité sociale nourrie par diverses formes d'injustices. Cette recherche s'engage à analyser le rôle du vagabondage dans la quête de l'identité et de l'appartenance, tout en examinant comment les dynamiques de genre et la transgression sociale se manifestent entant que moyen d’affranchissement des normes établies. / “Vagabondage, and the Claiming of Modern African American Diasporic Identity” explores the concepts of the “vagabond” and “urban mobility” in James Weldon Johnson’s Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man and Nella Larsen’s Quicksand. I rely on the concept of vagabondage in order to offer a refined representation of the complexity of blackness in an era of increased urbanization and mobility. Both characters depicted in the aforementioned novels serve as an ideal analytical foundation for investigating the diversity of African American identity in the modern era, particularly when read through the rubric of individual aspirations colliding with racism and social inequality. The research aims to analyze the role of vagabondage in the pursuit of identity and belonging. This will be achieved through my comparative study, which focuses on how social transgression is a form of liberation from sociocultural norms and how gender can both expand and limit this freedom.

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Le domaine du plein air est un champ traditionnellement masculin où les filles et les femmes éprouvent généralement des difficultés à être reconnues par leurs pairs et subissent plusieurs formes de discrimination. Cette faible reconnaissance, ainsi que la discrimination subie par plusieurs d’entre elles, ont des impacts négatifs sur leur participation, leur confiance en elle, leur sentiment d’appartenance, le développement de leurs habiletés techniques, et même, sur leur longévité professionnelle dans le domaine. Plusieurs activités de plein air se déroulent en contexte de groupe dans lesquels les inégalités de genre du domaine sont susceptibles d’émerger et de se reproduire. Ainsi, les groupes d’expédition sont des contextes privilégiés pour observer comment opèrent l’émergence et le fonctionnement des inégalités de genre dans le domaine du plein air. Ce projet de recherche doctorale vise à développer une meilleure compréhension des processus entourant la reconnaissance sociale dans les groupes d’expédition éducative, et ce, en portant une attention particulière au genre. Une étude de cas ethnographique comprenant de l’observation participante au cours d’une expédition de canotage de quatre semaines a été menée auprès d’un groupe d’étudiants (17 hommes et 7 femmes) engagés dans un programme de formation universitaire de premier cycle en intervention plein air. Un cadre conceptuel sociologique bourdieusien a été utilisé afin de rendre compte des différents processus pouvant influencer la reconnaissance sociale des membres d’un groupe d’expédition. Les concepts de champ, d’espèces de capital et d’habitus ont permis de mener trois analyses distinctes mais interreliées. La première étude est basée sur la signification et la valeur symbolique des tâches et des activités inhérentes à la conduite d’une expédition de canot et porte sur la division sexuée du travail en expédition. Cette étude montre comment le genre, les représentations du genre de même que la classe sociale interagissent pour orienter les stratégies d’amélioration ou de maintien de statut. La deuxième et la troisième mobilisent certains constats issus des travaux sur les hiérarchies de statut dans les groupes ayant des objectifs à atteindre. Plus précisément, la deuxième étude est basée sur le postulat selon lequel la perception de 6 compétence et les attentes de performance à l’égard d’une personne jouent des rôles déterminants dans les processus d’attribution de statut dans les groupes. L’analyse des données a permis d’identifier différentes stratégies consistant à laisser implicitement sous-entendre, dans ses actions ou ses discours, la possession d’une certaine expertise. Cette analyse a aussi permis de mettre en évidence comment les rapports sociaux de genre jouaient des rôles importants dans les processus de distinction liés à la compétence et comment les compétences de certaines femmes étaient parfois ignorées ou encore utilisées par d’autres participants pour apparaître plus compétents qu’elles. Enfin, la troisième analyse s’appuie principalement sur les concepts de capital social et de champ comme espace de luttes dans lequel les agents cherchent à influencer le mode de perception et d’appréciation légitime. Cette troisième analyse a permis d’identifier des stratégies consistant à gérer les relations et les interactions sociales avec autrui de façon à en tirer des avantages en termes d’amélioration ou de maintien de statut au sein d’un groupe. Cette étude a permis de montrer comment les rapports sociaux de genre et de classe interagissent et influencent les relations et les interactions sociales dans le groupe et donc, les processus de reconnaissance sociale. L’ensemble de ces analyses permet de mieux comprendre les logiques d’action et le fonctionnement, en contexte d’expédition, des inégalités fondées sur le genre et la classe sociale. Parallèlement, ces études ont aussi permis d’examiner certains enjeux relatifs à l’apprentissage et à la gestion des risques en contexte d’expédition éducative. À cet effet, des pistes d’intervention praxéologiques susceptibles de favoriser une dynamique de groupe plus inclusive et d’accroître le bien-être des participants, leur apprentissage et leur sécurité ont été proposées. / The outdoor field is a traditionally male-dominated field where girls and women generally have difficulty being recognized by their peers and suffer from many forms of discrimination. This low recognition, as well as the discrimination experienced by many of them, have negative impacts on their participation, confidence, sense of belonging, development of their technical skills, and even on their professional longevity in the field. Many outdoor activities occur in a group context where gender inequalities in the field are likely to emerge and recur. Thus, expedition groups are privileged contexts to observe how the emergence and functioning of gender inequalities in the outdoor field operate. This doctoral research project aims to develop a better understanding of the processes underlying social recognition in an educational expedition group, with particular attention to gender. An ethnographic case study involving participant observation during a four-week canoeing expedition was conducted with a group of students (N=24; 17 men and seven women) engaged in an outdoor adventure leadership undergraduate program at a university in Quebec (Canada). A Bourdieusien sociological conceptual framework was used to examine the different processes that could influence the social recognition of expedition group members. The concepts of field, forms of capital, and habitus offered powerful heuristic tools to conduct three distinct but interrelated analyses. The first study is based on the significance and symbolic value of the tasks and activities of a canoe expedition and focuses on the sexual division of labor. This study shows how gender, gender representations, and social class interact to guide the strategies used by the participants to maintain or uplift their social status as outdoor leaders. The second and third studies built on and seek to contribute to the research on status hierarchies in tasks-oriented groups. More specifically, the second study is based on the assumption that perception of competence and expectations of performance towards a person play decisive roles in the status allocation process in groups. Data analysis allowed us to identify various rationales underlying the strategies used by group members to convey an impression of competence in their actions or discourse. This analysis also highlighted how gender relations play essential roles in competence8 related processes of distinction and how the skills of some women are sometimes ignored or used by other participants to appear more competent than experienced women. Finally, the third analysis is mainly based on the concepts of social capital and field as a space of struggles in which agents seek to influence the legitimate principles of perception and appreciation in force in the group. In this third analysis, we identified six relational strategies that consist in managing social interactions and relations with other group members in order to improve or maintain one’s status within the group. This study showed how gender and class interact and influence relationships and social interactions in the group and, therefore, social recognition processes. Taken together, these analyses provide a better understanding of the logic of action and how inequalities based on gender and social class work in the context of expeditions. Moreover, these studies examined some issues related to learning, risk management, and inclusion in educational expeditions. To this end, practical recommendations have been proposed to foster a more inclusive group dynamic and increase participants' well-being, learning, and safety.

This thesis describes how I took part in a series of collaborations with dancers Danai Pappa and Katie Hall, musician George Williams and video artist Julie Kuzminska. To realise our collaborations, I built electronic sculptural instruments from junk using bricolage, the act of subversion, skip diving and appropriation. From an auto-ethnographic viewpoint, I explored how collaborations began, how relationships developed and how various levels of expertise across different disciplines were negotiated. I examined how the documentation of the performances related to, and could be realised as, video art in their own right. I investigated the themes of work, labour and effort that are used in the process of producing and documenting these works in order to better understand how to ‘create’. I analysed the gender dynamics that existed between my collaborators and myself, which led to the exploration of issues around interaction and intimacy, democratic roles and live art. The resulting works challenged gender stereotypes, the notion of what a musical instrument can be and how sound is produced through action/interaction. I found that reflective time was imperative; serendipity, constant awareness of one’s environment, community and intimate relationships greatly enhanced the success of the collaborations. Instruments became conduits and instigators with shifting implied genders based on their context or creative use. As well as sound being a product of movement, effort and interaction, I realised it was also an artefact of the instruments.

Drawing on the methods of feminist art history and my own knowledge of the field, this PhD gives an overview of “Russian” (Russian Empire, Soviet, post-Soviet) art history with women at its center. Starting in the late 18th century and spanning to the present-day, I critically examine women’s artworks, the social contexts in which those women find themselves, as well as their biographies. Thus, this thesis extends beyond strict media analysis as a central concern of feminist criticism. This text consist of five chapters. Chapter One begins at the end of the 18th century and covers women artists working throughout the Russian Empire up through the beginning of the 20th century. Thesis looks at specific women artists and how the path to professionalization opened up new doors while women were still largely excluded from elite artistic circles. This overview demonstrates how this occurred both in explicit social exclusion as well as implicitly – specifically in the ways that the portrayals of women in professional art shifted throughout the 19th century. The ambivalent nature of women’s simultaneous inclusion and exclusion from leading art institutions and groups serves as a defining feature of the art world of the Russian Empire. Chapter Two examines women’s roles in the avant-garde at the beginning of the 20th century. As has been recognized in much popular scholarship, women served as key players in the so-called “Russian Avant-Garde”. For instance, while many Western European artists at the time turned to the colonies of their respective empires for stimulation, many Russian avant-garde artists turned to local peasants. Precisely because of their more differentiated relationships, Chapter Two argues that these women artists produced very dissimilar work from their Western European counterparts. This was due both to questions of gender as well as power and colonialism. From there, thesis shows the ways in which women avant-garde artists made use of various media – especially textiles, porcelain, and book design. Chapter Three revolves around women artists in the Soviet Union. At first it examines how women were portrayed in Socialist Realism, which followed largely three archetypes: the collective farm woman, the sportswoman, and the ballerina. In this chapter focus is on how women navigated the slippery terrain of the social world of Socialist Realism by highlighting the role of its most successful example – Vera Mukhina. Tracing through Mukhina’s path from the avant-garde to Socialist Realism’s most famous female artists, the text reveals continuities between the two genres that have typically been overlooked in the literature. Indeed, Mukhina’s development suggests much more in common between the avant-garde and Socialist Realism than most male artists’ careers would indicate. Finally, this chapter discusses women artists who rejected Socialist Realism and produced so-called “unofficial” art – focusing on the (in)famous Bulldozer Exhibition of 1974. Chapter Four illuminates how women artists negotiated the enormous socio-political changes during Perestroika through past the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In the 1990’s, three prominent all-women art collectives emerged: the Factory of Found Clothes, the Cyber-Femin Club, and the Fourth Height. Based largely on interviews with the women who participated in the groups, text sketches out a general history of how they formed, produced art, and confronted questions of gender and society. Then, chapter four turns to women artists who worked mostly individually throughout the same period. In this thesis women artists from the 90’s are categorized based on their concepts of gender – women who flipped gender dynamics through their art, women who took radical stances toward gender through their art, and women who did not clearly challenge ideas of gender. In the text they are called the “flip-floppers”, the “radicals”, and the “quietists”, respectively. In Chapter Five, there is a break with the chronological approach of the previous chapters. Instead, first part compares the trial of Iuliia Tsvetkova in 2019 and the trial of Natalia Goncharova in 1910. Both women were accused of producing pornography and thus subject to prosecution. Through this comparison, one can see the continuities and ruptures of the gender dynamics in broader society then and now, particularly in relationship to art and art production. Second part of the chapter five, compares the so-called “Leningrad Feminists” of the 1970’s and Pussy Riot from the 2010’s. By highlighting how these two collectives used the imagery of the Virgin Mary in their work, the text draws out parallels between the two that have gone unnoticed, even by the artists themselves. This dissertation is thus fundamentally about connections. Connections, both visible and invisible, define the social constellations in which women artists participate. By drawing out these connections, this thesis reimagines Russian art history and propose new, albeit imperfect, in the words of Amelia Jones, genealogies. Such genealogies open the space for a deep reckoning with the canon.:Table of Contents Introduction But What is a Russian Woman Artist Anyway? Literature Review & Methodology Chapter Outline Chapter 1: Woman as Artist in the Russian Empire Imperialism and Internal Colonization Bridging Art Histories: Between the Russian Empire and the Western Empires The “Russian Empire” periods of Marie-Anne Collot, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, and Kristina Robertson Independent Foreign Women Artists, Operating Beyond Royal Patronage: Maria Gomion and Julie Hagen-Schwarz Representations of Local and European Women Artists in the Russian Empire: Comparing article “Russkie Khudozhnitsy” [Russian Women Artists] and Somov’s article “Zhenshchiny Khudozhnitsy” [Women Artists] Paths to Professional Art for Women Artists in the late Russian Empire Variety of Professional Strategies for Women Artists in the Russian Empire Challenges Faced by Women in the Imperial Academy of Arts: Marfa Dovgaleva, Avdotia Mikhailovna Bakunina, Sofia Sukhovo-Kobylina, and Katerina Khilkova Women Artists from the Russian Empire in the Académie Julian: Maria Bashkirtseff, Princess Maria Tenisheva, Maria Iakunchikova, and Elizaveta Zvantseva Female and Male Paths to Becoming an Artist: The Cases of Elena Polenova and Vasilii Polenov Women in the Wanderers and the World of Art Two Women Wanderers: Emily Shanks and Antonina Rzhevskaia Women in the World of Art and Related Circles: Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva, Elizaveta Kruglikova, Elena Polenova, Maria Yakunchikova, and Zinaida Serebriakova Between Artist, Mother, and Model: Self-Representations of Women Artists Insisting on the Professional Self: Katerina Dolgorukaia, Katerina Chikhacheva, Sofia Sukhovo-Kobylina, Maria Bashkirtseff, Elizaveta Kruglikova, Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva, Marianne Werefkin, and Teresa Ries The Fe[male] Gaze: Ol’ga Della-Vos-Kardovskaia, Tamara de Lempicka, and Zinaida Serebriakova Chapter 2: Women Artists Shaping the Avant-Garde Conceptualizing Avant-Garde in the Russian Empire Framing the “Feminine”: Noble and Peasant Femininities Women Artists and Religion: Natalia Goncharova and Marianne Werefkin Women Artists and Lubok: Sofia Kalinkina, Elizaveta Bem, and Maria Siniakova The Case of Natalia Goncharova: Between Two Worlds Looking West: Goncharova and Gauguin Looking East: Goncharova and Peasant Culture Craft in the Foreground: Women in Textile, Porcelain, and Book Design Women in Textile Design, Embroidery, and Factory Production: Natalia Davidova, Sonia Delaunay-Terk, Nadezhda Udaltsova, Vera Pestel, Ol’ga Rozanova, Varvara Stepanova, and Lubov Popova Women in Costume Design in the Early Soviet Union: Natalia Goncharova, Nina Genke-Meller, Alexandra Exter, Nadezhda Lamanova, Varvara Stepanova, Sonia Delaunay-Terk, and Vera Mukhina Women Artists and Futurist Books: Elena Guro, Natalia Goncharova, and Ol’ga Rozanova Women Artists and Children’s Book Illustration: Vera Ermolaeva, Elena Safronova, Alisa Poret, Tatjana Glebova, Maria Siniakova, Galina and Ol’ga Chichagovy, and others Women artists and Small Sculptural Forms (porcelain and ceramics): Natalia Danko and Alexandra Shekotikhina-Potozkaia Chapter 3: Women Artists in Socialist Realism and Unofficial Art Aligning Art History of the Soviet Union and Gender Studies Official Images of Women in the Soviet Union Kolkhoznitsa [Collective Farm Woman] Sportsmenka [Sportswoman] Balerina [Ballet Dancer] Socialist Realist Women Painters Women Artists in the Moscow School of Socialist Realism: Vera Orlova, Ekaterina Zernova, and Serafima Riangina Women Artists and the Leningrad School of Painting: Nadezhda Steinmiller, Evgenia Antipova, Vera Nazina, and others Women Socialist Realist painters from the Soviet Republics: Tetiana Iablonska, Vaiiha Samadova, the Sisters Aslamazian, Elene Akhvlediani, and others Women Artists as Soviet Sculptors Women as Sculptors before the Soviet Union: Elena Luksch-Makovskii, Maria Dillon, Teresa Ries, and Anna Golubkina A Case Study: Vera Mukhina the Soviet Sculptor – Between the Street and the Household Women Artists in Unofficial Art Some Aspects of Canonization of Women Artists of the Bulldozer Exhibit: Nadezhda Elskaia and Lydia Masterkova Artistic Couples in Soviet Unofficial Art and Their Visions of Eden Chapter 4: Women Artists in the Late Soviet Union and after Its Dissolution The Emergence of Women-Only Groups in the Post-Soviet Space: the Factory of Found Clothes (FFC), Cyber-Femin Club, the Fourth Height The Factory of Found Clothes (FFC): Ol’ga Tsaplia-Egorova and Natalia Gluklia-Pershina-Yakimanskaia The Cyber-Femin-Club: Alla Mitrofanova, Irina Aktuganova, Lena Ivanova, and Ol’ga Levina Chetvertaia Vysota [The Fourth Height]: Ekaterina Kameneva, Dina Kim, and Galina Smirnskaia Resisting Erasure: Women Artists from the 1990’s The Mirror Game or the Flip-Floppers: Anna Alchuk and Tania Antoshina The Radicals: Alena Martynova and Elena Kovylina The Quietists: Marina Perchikhina and Liza Morozova Curating the “Gender Turn” in the post-Soviet art: Natalia Kamenetskaia and others Chapter 5: Creating Parallel Histories Unacceptable Bodies: Trials against Natalia Goncharova in 1910 and Iuliia Tsvetkova in 2019 Bogoroditsa stan’ Feministkoi? Comparing the Leningrad Feminists and Pussy Riot Conclusion Illustrations Bibliography Additional Materials. Interviews.