Rozsika Parker (27 December 1945 – 5 November 2010) was a British psychotherapist, art historian and writer and a feminist.

Biography

Parker was born in London and spent her early years in

Oxford Oxford () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and non-metropolitan district in Oxfordshire, England, of which it is the county town. The city is home to the University of Oxford, the List of oldest universities in continuou ...

, studying at Wychwood School. Between the years 1966–1969, Parker studied for a degree in the history of

European art The art of Europe, also known as Western art, encompasses the history of visual art in Europe. European prehistoric art started as mobile Upper Paleolithic rock and cave painting and petroglyph art and was characteristic of the period betw ...

at the Courtauld Institute in London. In 1972, she joined the feminist magazine '' Spare Rib''. She and

Griselda Pollock Griselda Frances Sinclair Pollock (born 11 March 1949) is a British art historian, whose work focuses on analyzing visual arts and visual culture through global feminist and postcolonial feminist lenses. Since 1977, Pollock has been an influen ...

then went on to found a feminist group, The Feminist Art History Collective. In the 1980s, Parker had two children with the Jungian analyst Andrew Samuels, a boy and a girl. Parker died in 2010 at age 64 of cancer.

Legacy

In 2013, the ''Rozsika Parker Essay Prize'' was established by the British Journal of Psychotherapy. Parker's contention that embroidery was a way to educate women and a weapon for resistance helped develop computational fiber arts as Anastasia Salter notes in her essay, Re:traced Threads: Generating Feminist Textile Art with Tracery.

Books

*''Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology'', with

(1981) *''The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine (1984)'' * ''Framing Feminism: Art and the Women's Movement 1970–1985'' (1987) *''The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine'' (1989) *''Torn in Two: Experience of Maternal Ambivalence'' (1995) * ''Mother Love, Mother Hate: The Power of Maternal Ambivalence'' (1996) *''The Anxious Gardener (2006)''

References

External links

* Melissa Benn
"Deep maternal alienation"
''The Guardian'', 28 October 2006
"In Memoriam: Rozsika Parker, Feminist Art Historian and activist"
* Interview with Griselda Pollock about Rosie Parker
''Last Word''
BBC Radio 4, 3 December 2012. {{DEFAULTSORT:Parker, Rozsika 1945 births 2010 deaths Historians from London Alumni of the Courtauld Institute of Art British art historians British women art historians Feminist historians Feminist studies scholars British feminist writers Feminist theorists People educated at Wychwood School