Reparation and Visual Culture: Special issue of the Journal of Visual Culture
For the past several years, I have had the pleasure of thinking alongside Adrienne Huard about the possibilities and impossibilities of reparation in and through visual culture. We've been at work co-editing a special issue of the Journal of Visual Culture on...
Finding Viola Desmond in the Canadian archives
The tempo of academic publishing is sometimes maddeningly slow, but it also provides the opportunity to return to archival research with fresh eyes, and the perspectives of other scholars and researchers, and to think about what it means for the present. As part of my...
Projecting Citizenship: Photography and Belonging in the British Empire
A colleague and mentor once told me that the average amount of time between an academic author completing the manuscript to their first book and its actual publication was 9 years. That number was a helpful mile marker over the last several years as I moved through...
Citizen Subjects: photography, race and belonging in Canada
When Canada’s first citizenship laws came into effect in 1947, photography had already been representing this mode of belonging in the country for more than 50 years. Citizen Subjects: photography, race and belonging in Canada explores this unique context that allowed...
Classroom on “Spectatorship, race and citizenship”
I spent a lot of time over the last year reading, and making notes, and generally spending time alone with my thoughts. I think that is what research fellowships and post-docs are for, but for an extrovert double Leo, it was sometimes hard to remember why I was doing...
EMILIA–AMALIA at the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Toronto Art Book Fair
Since 2016, EMILIA–AMALIA has been hosting monthly meetings to explore the legacies of 1970s feminisms, with a particular focus on Italian feminisms and the histories of "second-wave" feminism that we have inherited. Initiated by Cecilia Berkovic, Annie MacDonell,...
“Developing Historical Negatives” out now in Photography and the Optical Unconscious
Academic publishing sometimes feels painfully slow. I learned, towards the end of my PhD, that the average time between finishing a dissertation and getting it edited into and published as a book manuscript is 9 years. 9 years! That felt like an eternity at the time,...
“Pedagogies of Looking” conversation with Kim Simon and Amish Morrell
C Magazine's fall issue addresses the art world's ongoing interest in forms of pedagogical practice, experimental education and public engagement, and it was under this rubric that editor Amish Morrell (whose own research also addresses forms of pedagogy, as seen in...
Picturing Canadian citizenship in the Black Star Collection
Throughout the month of June, I had the pleasure of working in the Black Star agency's collection at the Ryerson Image Centre (RIC) through their Elaine Ling Fellowship. During that time, I looked through more than 3,300 photographs in the collection, as part of the...
Family photography in “The Clarion” newspaper (1946-56)
Family photographs originate and often circulate in the private sphere of the home, but what kinds of political work do they do when they enter the public space of the newspaper?
Feminist Tactics of Citation, Annotation, and Translation: a dialogue with Helena Reckitt in On Curating
It's not often that I describe an event as "transformative," but Now You Can Go, the 13-day program of events, discussions and screenings exploring intergenerational feminisms, was just that for me. Happening across several institutions in London, UK, and organized by...
“Analogical Thinking”: on photography in the work of Meryl McMaster
Meryl McMaster's performance-based photographic works have been on my mind for several years, but it's only recently—in an essay for the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria's catalogue for the exhibition, "In Another Place, And Here," and now for the Carleton University...