INTRODUCTIONS TO MY RESEARCH ACTIVITIES + TEACHING PRACTICES
AREAS OF SPECIALIZATION
Visual culture, art history, hermeneutic aesthetics, visual culture of thanatology, photographic practices
RESEARCH ACTIVITIES: I work in a nebulous nexus of artistic practices in non-artistic environments: photographic practices in research, visual representations of thanatology, arts infused education, for example. This leads me to murky shadows of questioning how academics sometimes overlook the obvious influences of aesthetics in their own visual research practices, how studio art students ‘see Death’, or how Mondrian’s painting techniques can help grade 12’s learn algebra.
TEACHING PRACTICES: I bring my experiences in arts education in non-artistic environments to every teaching opportunity; whether that be in a university art history lecture on Manifestos: Calls for Revolutions (Futurism, Dadaism, Surrealism), a seminar class on What to Do with a Dead Body: Visual Representations of Living + Dying; or a conference paper presentation on Strange Bedfellows: Aesthetic Traditions + Photographic Practices. This often leads to hands-on, collaborative, critical, creative learning + teaching opportunities.
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
2021 Author, “Breaking the Frame: Evolving Practices of First-generation Photo-elicitation Researchers”. Visual Studies. 2021. https://doi.org/10.1080/1472586X.2021.1907780
2019 Author, “Cicansky at Play: A Genuine Conversation with SC Dam”, in Victor Cicansky” The Gardener’s Universe ed. Timothy Long and Julia Krueger, Mackenzie Art Gallery, Regina, SK. 2019. The Book was awarded the High Plains Book Art + Photography Award, 2020.
2016 PhD. Dissertation Title: Artistry in Social Research: What is the Relationship between Photographic Based Aesthetic Practices and Photographic Based Research Practices as Understood by Social Science Researchers? Graduate Program in Communications & Culture, Faculty of Arts, University of Calgary, Alberta. Supervisor: Brian Rusted. Awarded the 2016 IVSA Rieger Award for PhD Dissertation/Thesis
EDUCATION
2022 End Of Life Doula Certificate, Douglas College, Vancouver, BC – in progress
2016 PhD., Graduate Program in Communications & Culture, Faculty of Arts, University of Calgary, Alberta.
2007 – 2009 PhD. Coursework, Graduate Department of Educational Research, Faculty of Education, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta. Transferred September 2010.
1997 Masters of Studies (MSt.Oxon) in History of Art and Visual Culture, Linacre College, University of Oxford, Oxford, England, Trinity Term.
TEACHING EXPERIENCES
3rd Year Seminar: Visual Representations of Living + Dying, School of Critical + Creative Studies, Alberta University of the Arts, Alberta.
A highly popular course with students, it is designed to critically examine a variety of visual representations of death, living, and dying. We begin explorations with visual and historical representations of dominant practices and ideologies that inform funeral and burial practices in today’s Western societies but are critically challenged by examining alternative, diverse, and historical practices, including a focus on First Nations practices with local Elders – siyisgaas.
4th Year Seminar: Visual Methodologies Practices, School of Critical + Creative Studies, Alberta University of the Arts, Alberta.
We examine the relatively new field of visual methodologies by introducing interdisciplinary visual methods and disciplines into studio-based visual practices with an emphasis on visual ethics and aesthetics. Methodologies include: semiology, psychoanalysis, discourse analysis, visual ethnography, practice theory, photo-elicitation, among others.
1st Year Survey Course: Premodern Art + Visual Culture: Art to 1789, School of Critical + Creative Studies, Alberta University of the Arts, Alberta.
This lecture/seminar course considers the pre-modern history of art, craft and design through a range of visual and material cultural artefacts, practices and discourses. Thematic and conceptual comparisons and contrasts across contemporary visual cultures are emphasized. The course introduces basic period-specific and contemporary art historical methods, including formal, social and gender-based analysis.
1st Year Survey Course: Modernism + Contemporary Survey, School of Critical + Creative Studies, Alberta University of the Arts, Alberta.
This survey lecture course introduces students to selected histories and methods of the visual arts from 1789 to the present. Diverse historical art movements and early modern, modern, and contemporary categories are identified, defined, and discussed. Global cultural production is considered in its own contexts from current, contemporary visual culture perspectives. Artworks and artefacts are discussed in terms of their function as conveyors of complex cultural values and meanings.
2nd Year Lecture: Modernism(s), School of Critical + Creative Studies, Alberta University of the Arts.
A 2nd year course that introduces select histories of and critical debates about modernism(s) that cover fine arts, crafts, design, and media from 1850-1950. Connections are explored between the visual arts and major socio-economic formations of Modernity such as urbanism, industrialization, technology, market economies, indigenous knowledge + culture, colonialism and post-colonialism, feminism and gender politics as understood from contemporary perspectives.