Looking at the Past

Looks at Dayna Danger’s photography series Big’Uns with the scholarship and activism of Jas M. Morgan, and their 2017 “Kinship” issue of Canadian Art magazine.

Examines the concept of northern food sovereignty in relation to Alethea Arnaquq-Baril’s 2016 film “Angry Inuk.”

Covers the work of Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said, his concept of Orientalism, and European art and literature’s invention of “the Orient.”

Working with John Urry’s concept of the “tourist gaze” (1990) to understand the documentary work of Dennis O’Rourke and his 1988 film “Cannibal Tours.”

Explores the work of art historian Dr. Alice Ming Wai Jim and her Ethnocultural Art Histories research group at Concordia University, pertaining to histories of Asian art and Asian diaspora in Canada.

Surveying the colonial foundations of Canadian Art History using the work of Welastekwewiyik historian Andrea Bear Nicholas and her award-winning article in the Journal of Canadian Studies (2015).

Draws on Christinina Myers’s recent article in Canadian Art magazine, on a symposium entitled “Cripping the Arts” (Toronto 2019) in relation to Canada’s Bill C-81.

This week we work with Dr. Alexis Shotwell’s concept of white settlers claiming “bad kin” under settler colonialism, in relation to Dr. Sheelah McLean’s concepts of white meritocracy from her article “We built a life from nothing.”

Uses work by Black scholars Saidiya Hartman, Tiffany Lethabo King, and Robyn Maynard to examine the visual culture of enslavement.

Discusses Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s 2016 animated short, directed by Amanda Strong, in the context of the Canadian government’s 1884 potlatch ban and Audra Simpson’s concept of settler statecraft.