Feminist Critiques and the Modification and Persistence of Popular Androcentric Images of Early Hominin Biosocial Evolution

Abstract

A feminist critical gaze in analyses of images in popular media found that a patriarchal gaze in androcentric visual reconstructions of early biosocial hominin evolution persists despite some recent modifications in response to feminist critiques. Academic patriarchal reconstructions of hominin evolution and feminist critiques and research disproving them must first be outlined in order to be able to conduct feminist critical analyses of images in popular media that are influenced by academic research. Images of hominin evolution in popular media are important to examine not only because they shape public conceptions, but because they also influence archaeological reconstructions of hominin evolution.

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Notes on contributors

Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood

SUZANNE M. SPENCER-WOOD, professor at Oakland University since 2001 and research associate of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 1992–2019, organized the first two conference symposia on feminist gender research in historical archaeology in 1989, followed by several gender symposia and papers at conferences. Her feminist research focuses on middle-class reform women who transformed Western culture by creating new gender ideologies, female professions and institutions that often dominated parts of men’s urban public landscapes, but were accepted as natural extensions of women’s domestic roles. She analyzes the social agency of working-class, predominantly immigrant, women and their families who participated in reformers’ educational programs. Spencer-Wood’s publications on feminist theory include numerous articles, as well as book chapters in Quandaries and Quests, and in Women in Antiquity: Theoretical Approaches to Gender and Archaeology. E-mail: [email protected]