Yvonne Owens

Yvonne Owens is a past Research Fellow at the University College of London and a Professor of Art History and Critical Studies. Her publications to date have mainly focused on representations of women and the gendering of evil "defect" in classical humanist discourses, cross-referencing these figures to historical art, natural philosophy, medicine, theology, science and literature. Her book, Abject Eroticism in Northern Renaissance Art: the Witches and Femme Fatales of Hans Baldung Grien, was published by Bloomsbury London in 2020. She also writes art and cultural criticism, exploring contemporary post-humanist discourses in art, literature and new media. She serves as Editor for an anthology of essays titled Trans-Disciplinary Migrations: Science, the Sacred, and the Arts, forthcoming from Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Dr. Owens has published as an art and culture critic in many journals and public interest magazines, including Artichoke, Monday, Vie Des Arts, Focus on Women, Border Crossings, B.C. BookWorld, Surfacing, CMAJ, and other publications. She has also contributed critical essays for gallery catalogues for the Grunt, Winchester, Fran Willis, Centre Gallery, Petley Jones, Nanaimo, Gagosian, and Richmond art galleries. She has authored two books of folklore and mythology: The Journey of the Bard (1996), and The Cup of Mari Anu (1995), both from Horned Owl Publishers. Dr. Owens is also co-author with Jessica North-O'Connell of The Witch's Book of Days (1995) from Beach Holme Publishers, and a series of chapbooks published by Reference West Publishers in Victoria (poets and novelists Robin Skelton and Charles Lillard, editors). Her scholarly essays and published book chapters include “The Saturnine History of Jews and Witches,” Preternature (Vol. 3, No. 1, 2014), "Pollution and Desire in Hans Baldung Grien: The Abject, Erotic Spell of the Witch and Dragon" (in Angeliki Pollali and Berthold Hub, Eds., Images of Sex and Desire in Renaissance Art and Modern Historiography, 2016), ‘The Hags, Harridans, Viragos and Crones of Hans Baldung Grien’ (published as part of the ‘Hans Baldung Grien: New perspectives on his work, International Conference Proceedings,' October 18-20, 2018, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, Germany, 2019).