Profile Category Archives:

BA (Stanford), PhD (Johns Hopkins)

Dr. Dodge is a specialist in late medieval and Renaissance art and architecture, and the historical study of artists’ techniques. A former curator at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, she developed and taught York’s art history courses in Florence, Italy. Her research centres on technical and iconographic issues in 14th and 15th century Italian art and on the roles and representations of women in Western historical art. Her publications include articles on 14th century Italian fresco painting, the artistic impact of Petrarch’s Triumphs, six articles in the International Dictionary of Art and Artists, and numerous book reviews.

BFA (Manitoba), Post-Grad Dipl. (Newcastle-upon-Tyne)

An experienced arts administrator and educator, Professor Cohnstaedt is a former Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts at York University, and a former Chair of the Ontario Council of University Affairs. Prior to her appointment at York, she served as Deputy Minister of Culture, Heritage and Recreation in Manitoba and as Executive Director of the Saskatchewan Arts Board.

Professor Cohnstaedt’s research interests and publications include studies in comparative cultural policy, arts and the law, arts and cultural administration, and minorities and the arts. She was awarded the Bora Laskin National Fellowship in Human Rights Research in support of her work in this area in relation to cultural and communications policy

Senior Scholar

BA (Toronto), MA (California-Berkeley), PhD (London)

Professor Carpenter’s research interests include the history, theory, and practice of art criticism, Canadian and American art since 1940, and the psychology of creativity. His extensive publication credits include sixty articles in journals such as Art International, Arts, Vie des arts, The Journal of Canadian Art History, Studio International, The Canadian Encyclopedia and the Dictionary of Art. Exhibitions he has curated include The Caro Connection: Sculpture by Sir Anthony Caro from Toronto Collections; The Heritage of Jack Bush, A Tribute (Robert McLaughlin Gallery), which toured extensively; and Caricature and Conscience: The Sculpture of Dora Wechsler (with Carolyn Robinson) for Toronto’s Koffler Gallery.

Professor Carpenter has been guest critic at the Emma Lake Artists’ Workshop and guest lecturer at numerous Canadian and American universities. He was a recipient of the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Association’s award for excellence in teaching.

Publications

Selected Publications

Entries on Graham Coughtry, Clement Greenberg, Harold Rosenberg, Dictionary of Art (London: Macmillan, 1996)

The Caro Connection, Sculpture by Sir Anthony Caro from Toronto Collections (Toronto: Koffler Gallery, 1995)

“Joseph Drapell Paints a Picture”, Art Post 7:2 (Winter-Spring 1990)

“Triumph over Adversity” in Karen Wilkin, ed., Jack Bush (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1984), 84-97.

B.I.D. (Manitoba), MA (Ohio), PhD (Cornell)

Professor Brown is a medievalist whose research areas include the art of medieval Ireland, Britain and the Norman world, with special emphasis on the results of the meeting of different artistic heritages, and 19th and 20th century architectural glass produced in Canada or imported to Canada from abroad. She is the founding director of the Registry of Stained Glass Windows in Canada.

Publications

Books

The Bayeux Tapestry: History and Bibliography (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1988).

Articles

“The Influence of German Religious Stained Glass in Canada 1880-1941”, RACAR (Revue d’art canadienne/Canadian Art Review), vol.21, no.1 – 2 (1994), 21-31 (appeared Nov.1996)

“Wilhelmina Geddes’ Ottawa Window”, Irish Arts Review vol. 10 (1994), 181-188.

“The ‘Adelae Comitissae’ of Baudri of Bourgeuil and the Bayeux Tapestry”, co-authored with Michael W. Herren, in Anglo-Norman Studies XVI. Proceedings of the Battle Conference 1993, (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 1994), 55-73.

“Massey Hall’s Hidden Glass Treasures”, Rotunda vo. 26 no. 2 (Fall 1993), 28-33. “The Ringed Crosses of the Celts”, Rotunda vol.25, no.1 (Summer 1992), 29-35.

“A Regal Landmark in Stained Glass”, Rotunda, vol.25, no.3 (Winter 1992), 30-35.

“The Bayeux Tapestry: Why Eustace, Odo and William?”, Anglo-Norman Studies XII. Proceedings of the Battle Conference 1989, (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 1990), 7-28.

“Christ Healing the Sick Child: A Treasure in Stained Glass”, Rotunda, vol. 23, no.3 (Winter 1990) 11-17.

“The Bayeux Tapestry: History or Propaganda?”, The Anglo-Saxons, Synthesis and Achievement, J.D.Woods and David A.E.Pelteret, eds. (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1985), 11-25.

“The Bayeux Tapestry and the `Song of Roland’”, Olifant, vol.6, nos.3 & 4 (Spring & Summer 1979) 339-350. (Proceedings of Roncevaux 778-1978, Pennsylvania State University, 1978.)

Reviews

“The Role of Art in the Late Anglo-Saxon Church by Richard Gameson (Oxford, 1995)”, American Historical Review, (April 1997)

“The Archaeology of Early Medieval Ireland by Nancy Edwards (London, 1991)”, Speculum, vol.68, no.3 (July 1993), 753-755.

“The Bayeux Tapestry by David M.Wilson (London, 1985)”, RACAR, (Spring 1988), 72-74.

Regina College School of Art, University of Saskatchewan; Vancouver School of Art

Professor Breeze has exhibited his paintings in numerous solo and group shows on four continents. His work is found in public, corporate and private collections, including Canada’s National Gallery. Among his works are several pieces of public art, including the 300 ft. ceramic tile mural in the Spadina subway station, Toronto.

Professor Breeze is a member of the prestigious Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. He was awarded the Queen’s Jubilee Medal in recognition of his work and his contributions to the visual arts in Canada.

BFA (Cranbrook Academy of Art)

Sculptor Ted Bieler has extensive exhibition credits throughout North America. His commissioned works include sculptures for Expo ’67 in Montreal and for public spaces throughout Ontario, notablyTetra in Kingston, and Canyons in the Wilson subway station and Triad on Front Street at University Avenue in Toronto. His monumental outdoor sculpture Wave Breaking can be seen on the grounds of the Canadian chancery building in Tokyo. His most recent commission, Tower Song, is installed at the Windsor Sculpture Garden.

Prior to York, Professor Bieler taught at the Albright-Knox Art School of the University of Buffalo and in the Department of Art and Archaeology of the University of Toronto, where he initiated courses in both the history and the practice of sculpture. He has served on the boards of directors of the Toronto Sculpture Garden and the Power Plant gallery at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre.

BA (McGill), MA, PhD (Columbia)

Professor Zemel joined the faculty in the Department of Visual Arts in 2000. Prior to York, she taught at Concordia University, Temple University (Philadelphia), Dartmouth College and the State University of New York at Buffalo, where she chaired the Art History Department from 1997-2000.

Professor Zemel’s areas of research and publication include 19th and 20th-century European art, the modern art market, feminism in the arts, Jewish visual culture and diaspora studies. An authority on the work of Vincent Van Gogh, her books include The Formation of a Legend – Van Gogh Criticism 1890-1920 (UMI Research Press, 1980) and Van Gogh’s Progress: Utopia and Modernity in Late Nineteenth-Century Art (University of California Press, 1997). Her articles have appeared in The Art Bulletin, Art History, Artscanada, Art in America, Jong Holland and several scholarly anthologies. She served as co-editor of RACAR (Revue d’art canadienne/Canadian Art Review) from 1995-98.

In 2000/01, Dr. Zemel was a Fellow at the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, engaged in completing a book titled Graven Images: Visual Culture and Modern Jewish History. With Professors Shelley Hornstein (York University) and Reesa Greenberg (Concordia University), she is co-founder and co-director of Project Mosaica, a web-based exploration of Jewish cultural expression in the arts.

BFA, MFA (Concordia); Art Ed. Dipl. (McGill)

Nell Tenhaaf is an electronic media artist and theoretician with extensive publication, lecture and exhibition credits across Canada, in the US and in Europe. Her practice focuses on the intersection of art, science and technology, using digital media to integrate elements from these different fields. She is represented in Toronto by Paul Petro Contemporary Art.

In 2005 Professor Tenhaaf was awarded a major grant through the New Media Initiative, jointly funded by the Canada Council and the National Science and Engineering Research Council, for a collaborative project with Professor Melanie Baljko in York’s Department of Computer Science. The Lo-fi project uses art and science to create interactive installations in which humans interact with artificial agents. The interactive sculptures Push/Pull (2009) and WinWin (2012) are outcomes of this ongoing project.

Professor Tenhaaf has published numerous reviews and articles that address the cultural implications of biotechnologies and of Artificial Life (an area of research that studies dynamics in nature through computational models as well as software or robotic agents with lifelike behaviours). She was a jury member for the Madrid-based Vida art and artificial life competition from its inception in 1997 until it wrapped up in 2014.

Professor Tenhaaf is cross-appointed to Digital Media and Visual Art & Art History. She has served as associate dean and as coordinator of the Digital Media Program in AMPD. Prior to joining York University in 1997, she taught at Concordia University, the University of Ottawa and Carnegie Mellon University.

Art History and Education

BFA (Concordia), BEd (McGill), MA (York), PhD (Manchester)

Scholarly Interests

Canadian Art History; Visual Culture and Identity; Museum History and Pedagogies; Visual Rhetoric and Nationalism, Group Portraiture; Teaching of Visual Arts and Art History in Higher Education; History of Visual Culture in Canada

Professor Stanworth has published on topics related to visual culture and pedagogy; higher education and the arts; feminist cultural theory and production; and narrative and history. Her articles have appeared in Art History (UK), Histoire Sociale/Social History, Resources in Feminist Research, Journal of Canadian Studies, Symploke Journal of Comparative Literature and Theory, Journal of Canadian History and University of Toronto Quarterly.

Her teaching and research address issues of knowledge formation within visual culture, with a particular emphasis on the representation of identities, and the paradox of belonging and difference.

Visibly Canadian: Imging Identities in the Canadas, 1820-1910 (2015) is an award winning book on visual culture and identity in 19th century Canada that examines the ways in which visual culture participates in the construction and mediation of social identities, particularly in early museum pedagogies, visual spectacle and the representation of group identities. Current research includes a research project of case studies about bawdy images in 20th century Canada.

Dr. Stanworth is joint appointed to the Faculties of School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design and Education, and is associated with the Graduate Program in Interdiscipinary Studies, Graduate Program in Visual Arts and Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies at York.

Publications

Stanworth, Karen (2015). Visibly Canadian: Imaging Visual Identities in the Two Canadas, 1820-1910, Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press. Beaverbrook Canadian Art History Series, 456 p.

Stanworth, Karen, ed. (2014). Imaging Home: Resistance, Migration, Contradiction, Toronto: CLGA Publications, 32 p., ISBN 978-0-9917780-1-0.

Stanworth, Karen (2014). “Excesses of the Bawdy Body: John Wentworth Russell and his modern girls, 1927-35,” in Julia Skelly, ed. The Uses of Excess in Visual and Material Culture: 1600-2010, London: Ashgate Press, 205-224.

Stanworth, Karen (2013). “Revisioning the ‘Culture of Nature’ in Canadian Visual Culture Studies: John Russell and An/Other Case of Modern Art,” Journal of Canadian Studies, 47:3, 67-92.

Stanworth, Karen (2012). “Picturing the Land”, Critical Review of M. McKay, Picturing the Land. Narrating Territories in Canadian Landscape Art, 1500-1950, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011. In Journal of Canadian Art History, XXXII: 2, 153-157.

Stanworth, K. “Ethics of Knowledge: education, tradition and post-modernity”, web exclusive article, Academic Matters, July 2010; [review essay, Art School (Propositions for the 21st Century), Steven H. Madoff, ed. MIT Press, 2009].

Stanworth, K. (2005). “Interdisciplinarity in the work of Francoise Sullivan”, in Caught in the Act: An Anthology of Performance Art by Canadian Women, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 387-396.

Stanworth, K. and J. Hladki (2002). “A Critical Introduction to Feminist Cultural Production”,Resources in Feminist Research, 29:3/4, 9-18. Issue editors.

Stanworth, K. (2002). “In Sight of Visual Culture. Pedagogy and the Discipline of Art History”,Symploke Journal of Comparative Literature and Theory, Special Issue: Sites of Pedagogy, 10:1, University of Nebraska

Stanworth, K. (1997). “Storytelling, History, and Identity in William Pars’s Portrait of Three Friends“,University of Toronto Quarterly, 66:2, 431-443.

Presentations

“Tugging at the Edges: Tracing Lesbian Lives in and near the Gay Archives, 1950-1980,” Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Toronto, May 22-25, 2014.

“Queer Exceptionality as the Everyday: Narrating History as Visual Performance,” University Art Association, Banff Centre for the Arts, Alberta, Oct. 2013.

“Picturing Nude Women: John Russell and the Painting of Toronto Islands as a Scene of Shame and Disrepute, 1935,” University Art Association of Canada, Concordia University, Montreal, Nov 2012.

“The Colonial Museum in the Two Canadas: Narratives, Objects, Subjects”, The Archive and Everyday Life, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, May 2010.

“Staging a Siege: the spectacular representation of citizenship”, Instruction, Amusement and Spectacle: Popular Shows and Exhibitions 1800-1914, University of Exeter, April 2009

“Morality and Modernity: the discursive production of the immoral body in a painting by John Russell”, University Art Association of Canada, Victoria, B.C, 2005

“The Indiscipline of Methodologies in Cultural Studies”, Cultural Studies Association (US), Tuscon, Arizona, 2005

“Visual Rhetoric and Representation in the Portrait of George Washington and Family”, Inventio: ReReading the Rhetorical Tradition, University of Waterloo, 2003

Organized session on “Visual Construction of Social Identity in Canada, 1800-1939″, University Art Association of Canada, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 2000

“Images in Texts; Images in Context – early illustration of school book primers”, Canadian History of Education Society Conference, London, Ontario, 2000.

 

Time-Based Art

BFA (Concordia), MFA (York)

www.envisioninglgbt.com Envisioning Global LGBT Human Rights

Professor Nicol is an award-winning documentary filmmaker whose work is grounded in the tradition of the artist as activist, probing issues of human rights, social justice and struggles for social change. Nicol’s research, writing and creative projects include video art and documentary as well as critical writing in LGBT human rights and social movements in Canada and internationally. She has created more than 33 feature films and presented her works widely in national and international festivals, conferences and community-based organizations.

Nicol is the Principle Investigator of Envisioning Global LGBT Human Rights, a partnership of mutual learning that brings together 31 international and community-based partners in Canada, India, Uganda, Kenya, Botswana, Belize, Jamaica, St. Lucia and Guyana. The project combines participatory documentary and participatory action research with qualitative interviewing, focus groups, and legal data research and analysis, to make a unique contribution to documenting and analyzing criminalization, resistance to criminalization and asylum within and beyond regions. Envisioning Global LGBT Human Rights is funded by a Community-University Research Alliances (CURA) award from the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) ($1,000,000, 2011-2016).

The goals of the project are to research and document the impact of laws that criminalize people on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity; the ways in which LGBT and human rights groups are organizing to resist criminalization and to advance LGBT rights; and flight from persecution and LGBT refugee issues in Canada – including implications for human rights policy formation, social services, and immigration and refugee policies.

As part of the Envisioning work, Nicol developed participatory video projects with partners based in the Caribbean, India and Africa. Recent outcomes include: And Still We Rise, (70 min., 2015), a moving documentary on resistance to the Anti-Homosexual Act (AHA) in Uganda; co-directed by Nancy Nicol and Richard Lusimbo, Sexual Minorities Uganda and Envisioning. No Easy Walk To Freedom (91 min., 2014) documents the growth of queer organizing and the struggle to decriminalize same sex sex in India. Directed by Nicol, in partnership with Naz Foundation India Trust in Delhi, and Naz Foundation International in Lucknow and Envisioning. The Time Has Come (31 min. 2013) features LGBT human rights defenders from around the world in the context of UN regional seminars to strategize on ways to strengthen protections under the historic United Nations resolution that recognized sexual orientation and gender identity as prohibited grounds for discrimination in 2011, produced by Vance, Fisher (ARC International) and Nicol (Envisoning Global LGBT Human Rights) and filmed by Envisioning videographers from Africa and the Caribbean, the documentary.

A large number of video shorts have been produced through Envisioning participatory video projects, many of which were included in an exhibition Imaging Home: Migration, Resistance, Contradiction, at the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives during World Pride Toronto – June 24 to October 22, 2014, and which are available on the Telling Our Stories pages of the Envisioning website. Other participatory video shorts are available on the Our Work pages of the Envisioning website.

Professor Nicol is a frequent contributor to international conferences in the areas of LGBT human rights, social movements, and art and activism. Her recent scholarly publications include: “Envisioning Global LGBT Human Rights: Strategic alliances to advance knowledge and social change”, by Nicol, Gates-Gasse (OCASI) and Mulé. Scholarly and Research Communication, Special Issue: Community-Based Participatory Research, Vol. 5, No 3, 2014; “Sexual Rights and the LGBTI movement in Botswana”, by Monica Tabengwa and Nancy Nicol, in: Human Rights, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in the Commonwealth: Struggles for Decriminalisation and Change. Corinne Lennox and Matthew Waites (eds.) London: Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, London, UK. 2013. Nicol has also contributed to the research reports on LGBT asylum in Canada – including “Envisioning LGBT Refugee Rights in Canada: Is Canada A Safe Haven?” written by, Gamble, Mulé, Nicol, Waugh, Jordan, and Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants. Sept. 2015.

Other publications include: “Politics of the Heart: recognition of homoparental families”, in Who’s Your Daddy? And Other Writings on Queer Parenting, ed. Rachel Epstein (Sumac Press, March 2009); “Legal Struggles and Political Resistance: Same-Sex Marriage in Canada and the U.S” co-written with Miriam Smith, Sexualities Vol 11, Issue 6 (Sage Publications, December 2008, pp.667-687); and “Politics of the Heart: recognition of homoparental families”, Florida Philosophical Review: Journal of the Florida Philosophical Association, Vol 8, issue 1 (University of Central Florida Department of Philosophy, summer 2008).

In 2014 Nicol was nominated by York University for a Trudeau Fellowship and in May 2011, Professor Nicol was honoured for her contributions to research and documentaries on LGBT movements histories, and inducted into the National Portrait Collection of the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives.

In 2009, Professor Nicol completed her award-winning series From Criminality to Equality on the history of lesbian and gay rights organizing in Canada from 1969 to 2009 (Elle Flanders Award for Best Documentary, Inside Out, Toronto, 2007 and 2006; Best Documentary, Image + Nation, Montreal, 2006; Audience Choice Award, Making Scenes, Ottawa, 2002; John Bailey Completion Award, Inside Out, 2002). The series includes the films Stand Together (124 min. 2002), The Queer Nineties (90 min. 2009), Politics of the Heart (68 min. 2005) and The End of Second Class (90 min. 2006). This body of work was supported by a research/creation grant of $198,464 awarded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (2003-07) as well as grants from the Canada Council for the Arts ($60,000) and Ontario Arts Council ($20,000) in 2007.  Other films include: Dykes Planning Tykes (61 min., 2011) which provides a look into the groundbreaking family planning course for lesbians and queer identified women; and One Summer in New Paltz a Cautionary Tale (2008) on the struggle for same sex marriage in the USA.