I informally interviewed six art historians, one with a degree in women's studies, a film theorist, and a director of a women's studies program (a group both male and female) on the topic of this panel, the "division between women's studies and art history". The majority said that they thought that there simply is not a divide between the two. Indeed, the assumption among most art historians that I know is that since feminism and the study of women as producers and as subjects of art is central to art history as they practice it and teach it, art history itself is a form of women's studies.

The dissatisfactions and complaints that I did hear were related to the biases about the different disciplines and methodologies practiced by scholars in women's studies departments. For what is women's studies if not a group of scholars from different disciplines who share what one interviewee calls an ethic? It seems to me that part of the problem with this question for the scholars that I interviewed was the assumption that women's studies is a monolith, which it is not (any more than art history is!).

In other words, the complaints and dissatisfactions I heard were based upon the specifics of the institution each was at, and the disciplinary biases they experienced, and that they themselves had.

This seems to be a result of the fact that each women's studies department originated differently, and the combination of the types of scholars that make up the departments create different disciplinary and methodological biases. To illustrate this I would like to set out the concerns expressed by interviewees and to analyze them in this light.

Concern 1. One scholar complains that in her institution, women's studies emphasizes sociology and quantitative research and that members of the department exhibit a suspicion of, and disinterest in, the humanities. This includes not just visual arts, including film, but literature and performing arts as well.

Concern 2. Women's studies at her institution has, she states, no sophisticated concept of representation. Indeed, she complains that they refuse to acknowledge that the images and texts that we produce and read shape who we are.

Analysis: The "powers that be" in the department of women's studies at her institution are sociologists. They are social scientists who have methodologies and, more importantly, what they consider appropriate material for study. For these scholars, the arts are not considered appropriate materials for study. There are, of course, many women's studies programs which grew out of humanities, and which are biased on the other side.

Concern 3. Another scholar notes (I think rightly so) that many art historians are put off by those in other disciplines (women's studies scholars or historians that work in women's studies, for example) who do work with images. She complains that non-art-historians produce very literal readings or analyses, of images. Art historians blame this on a lack of skills and training in visual analysis on the part of these non-art-historians, and upon their desires to make images illustrate a point: to make images fit the cookie cutter of their theory/ideology instead of addressing the images on their own terms in the context of their production.

Analysis: Again, this can be seen as a difference of views on how to address material that goes back to training and methodology. But this is not necessarily a problem between two disciplines; many art historians complain of this very thing within their own discipline. This is a territorial contest, and segues into another concern.

Concern 4: Another scholar states that women's studies is receptive to art history but has not made an effort to approach art historians, and that art historians have not made an effort to approach or work with scholars in women's studies. She sees two reasons for this: One, that art produced by women and that represents women has not been seen as a worthy subject of study by non-art-historians who practice women's studies.

The second reason she sees for this is that art historians have an investment in high art with a capital A, and are threatened by cultural studies which seeks to make all images equal, and therefore, to knock fine art with a capital A off its pedestal.

Analysis: Can't this be seen as due to the fact that scholars are disciplinarily trained, and that the materials that they address and the skills that they hone predetermine in many instances what they will study? Can we not also complain about the divide between art history and literature or art history and politics, or women's studies and literature and politics?

This very brief overview of concerns expressed by those I interviewed brings us back to the point I made in the beginning, which an interviewee put so well: "To ask about the divide between art history and women's studies is off the mark". What seems to be going on here is scholars running into, and experiencing, biases about the different disciplines and methodologies practiced by other scholars, whether they be in women's studies or in other departments. These are often related to the culture of the specific institutions (which produce the disciplinary makeup of a women's studies department), and with the boundaries of disciplinarity itself.

Is this a result of the fact that women's studies faculty come from different disciplines? Does this have to do with the fact that despite this, they are producing students who get degrees in a discipline different from what their respective teachers were trained in? Is this a question of women's studies departments bumping up against the limits of disciplinarity? The limits of the training of their members?