Research Fields
- Nineteenth-century French art
- socio-medical aspects of childhood and maternity
- fashion and design
- breastfeeding, pain, death, and sleep
About
Prof. Gal Ventura is a cultural art historian in the Department of Art History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research focuses on nineteenth-century French art, an epoch of revolutionary political, demographic, and cultural changes and engages socio-medical aspects of childhood, maternity, breastfeeding, pain, death, and sleep. Her recent essays, published in various international journals, investigate motherhood, medicine, design, and fashion.
Selected Publications
Gal Ventura, 2015, "Nursing in Style: Fashion versus Socio-medical Ideologies in Late Nineteenth-Century France," Journal of Social History 48, no. 3 (Spring, 2015): 536-554.
Gal Ventura, 2017, "Intention, Interpretation and Reception: The Aestheticization of Poverty in William Bouguereau's Indigent Family," Visual Resources 33, nos. 3-4 (Autumn, 2017): 204-233.
Gal Ventura, 2017, "'Long Live the Bottle': The French Bottle-Feeding Industry in the Nineteenth Century," Social History of Medicine 33, no. 2 (Autumn, 2017): 329-356.
Gal Ventura, 2019, "'Ceci n'est pas un Berceau': The Majestic Cradle of Napoleon's Son," Journal of Design History 32, no. 4 (September, 2019), 323-339.
Gal Ventura, 2020, "The Game of Chance: Marcel Duchamp's Large Glass and Nineteenth-Century French Political Caricatures," Konsthistorisk tidskrift: Journal of Art History 89, no. 5 (September, 2020), 1-23.
Teaching
Bachelor's degree courses
Introduction to Modern and Contemporary Art (2013-present)
Aesthetics: Critical thought about Art (2008-2012)
Oh Mama! Maternity in Visual Culture (2011-2012, 2018-2019, 2021)
Paris: Capital of the Nineteenth Century (2014-2016, 2019, 2021)
The Art of Blasphemy (2015, 2017, 2020)
Paris: Urbanism, Consumerism and Modernity (2016-present, Amirim)
Introduction to Aesthetics: Modern Critical Thinking Through the Arts (2017)
Me, Me, Me: Selfie and Narcissism (2019)
Master's degree courses
The History of Art History (2016-present, M.A.)
From Durer to the Selfie: The Art of Portraiture (2016-2017, 2021, M.A.)