Conferences and Public Talks

Forthcoming:

2023

“The Photograph, the Book, and the Bird-Lover: Producing, circulating, and viewing ornithological photography.” Photomechanical Prints: History, Technology, Aesthetics, and Use, Foundation for Advancement in Conservation, AIC, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, October 31 – November 2, 2023. https://learning.culturalheritage.org/p/photomechanical#tab-product_tab_symposium

Past:

2022

Panel Discussion, “Inventing the Land: The History of Landscape Photography,” McCord Museum, September 28, 2022, at 6 p.m. https://www.musee-mccord-stewart.ca/en/activities/inventing-land-history-landscape-photography/

Panel Discussion, “Pedagogies of the Survey.” Open Art Histories Pedagogy Institute, Queen’s University, June 16-18, 2022 https://openarthistories.ca/oah-pedagogy-institute

2021

“Asian Collections in Canadian Museums and Galleries from the Nineteenth Century to Today.” Co-chair with Sisi Li. Universities Art Association of Canada / Congrès AAUC, Virtual Conference, October 20–23. https://uaac-aauc.com/2021/

Pecha Kucha, “A Bird in the Hand: Collecting Specimens through Photographically Illustrated Books.” The Material and the Virtual in Photographic Histories. Photography Network’s 2021 Virtual Symposium, October 7-9, 2021. https://www.photographynetwork.net/symposium/#schedule

Roundtable Discussion with Sherry Farrell Racette and Paul Seesequasis. “Every Picture Tells a Story: reframing and reclaiming historical Indigenous photography: Blanket Toss Under the Midnight Sun.” One Province One Book Event, Regina Public Library Talk, online, March 24.

“Trying to Experience the Aura of Art in an Age of Virtual Reproductions.” Virtual Roundtable, Absence/Presence and the New Normal. Faculty of Media, Art and Performance and Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana, March 5.

2020

Panel Organized. “The Illustrated Slide Lecture is History: Reflections on Shifting Technology and Modes of Presentation in Art” Co-Chair with Tal-Or Ben-Choreen. Universities Art Association of Canada / Congrès AAUC, Simon Fraser Univerity and the University of British Columbia, October 15-17.

2019

“The Fuzzy Logic of Photography: Unpacking the Image in the Age of Ones and Zeros.” Digital-Futures Research Cluster and the Humanities Resesarch Institute Symposium: Fuzzy Logic: Unpacking our Digital Future, University of Regina, Saskatchewan, November 27.

“Narrating Photography’s Blind Field; or How Photography Can Teach us About the World Outside the Picture’s Frame.” Faculty of Media+Art+Performance Fall 2019 Presentation Series, University of Regina, Saskatchewan, November 1.

“Narrating the Blind Field: Sites of Photographic and Ecological Knowledge in Rena Effendi’s Liquid Land,” Universities Art Association of Canada, Quebec City, October 24-27

Participant in a roundtable organized by Fondation Phi pour l’art contemporaine on the topic of “Reproduction de l’image: Quand l’imprimé crée de nouveaux contextes,” at Papier 2019 Art Fair, Montreal, Quebec, April 27, 2019. Speakers: Karla McManus, Helene Brousseau, and Richard-Max Tremblay.

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Images Courtesy of Art Papier 2019 and Fondation Phi. Photographer: Jean-Michael Seminaro

2019

“Romance Between Friends: Revisiting the National Film Board of Canada’s Photobook of the Canada-U.S. Borderline,” The British, American and French Photobook: Commitment, Memory, Materiality and the Art Market (1900-2019), Maison Française, Oxford, March 14-16.

2018

Panel Organized. “New Directions in Ecocritical Art and History,” Universities Art Association of Canada Conference / Congrès AAUC, University of Waterloo, Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, October 25-27.

“Animating Oil: Memory, Narrative, and the Blind Field in Rena Effendi’s ‘Liquid Land’,” Petrocultures, Glasgow University, Scotland, August 29-September 1.

“Modern Energy Rising: Margaret Bourke-White’s Aerial Photography of Canada’s Last Industrial Frontier,” Visible Evidence XXV, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, August 8-11.

2017

Panel Organized. “Roundtable: The High Art, Fast Culture, and Political Life of Oil.” Co-chair with Brent Bellamy. Association for the Study of Literature and Environment, Detroit, Michigan, June 20-24.

‘Take Only Photographs’: the Predatory Practice of Bird Photography in Print.” Spring School,
Sites of Photographic Knowledge: The Book, the Laboratory, the Territory
, Montreal and Quebec City, June 12-16.

‘LIFE in the North’: Margaret Bourke-White Photographs the 1937 Arctic Tour of Lord Tweedsmuir, Canada’s Governor General.” American Society for Environmental History, University of Illinois at Chicago, March 29-April 2.

Panel Organized. Photographing Environment and Empire: A Methodological Roundtable of Case Studies” American Society for Environmental History, University of Illinois at Chicago, March 29-April 2.

2016

“Human Rights as Environmental Rights: An Ethical/Ecological Re-Reading of Aileen and W. Eugene Smith’s Minamata (1971-1974) and Sabastiao Salgado’s Sahel (1984-85),” Universities Art Association of Canada/ Congrès AAUC, Université de Québec à Montréal, October 27-30.

“Picturing the Environmental Commons: Lorene Squire’s Photography in The Beaver Magazine, 1937-1942.” Association for Literature, Environment, and Culture in Canada Biennial Conference, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, June 15-18.

‘His Rightful Heritage of Something to Eat’: the Contested History of Indigenous and Settler Duck Hunting in the Photographs of Lorene Squire.” American Society for Environmental History Conference, Seattle, Washington, March 30-April 3.

Panel Organized. Photographing Environmental Histories: Capturing, Presenting, and Circulating Environmental Change in the Past and Present.” American Society for Environmental History Conference, Seattle, Washington, March 30-April 3.

2015

Panel Organized. “(Re)Constructing the Past, Illustrating ‘Civilisation’: Scientific and Historical Theories in Art and Illustration through the Long Nineteenth Century,” Universities Art Association of Canada Conference / Congrès AAUC, NSCAD, Halifax, Nova Scotia, November 5-7.

“The Future-Past, the Future-Present, the Future-Possible: David McMillan’s Repeat Photographs of the Ongoing Chernobyl Disaster.” SSHRCC-funded Symposium: Through Post-Atomic Eyes, Art Gallery of Ontario, U of Toronto, and OCADU, Toronto, Ontario, October 23-25.

2015

“The Post-Photographic Ecology of Environmental Activism: Around the World with Cecil the Lion.” International Colloquium for Le Mois de la Photo, À partir d’aujourd’hui … Reconsidering Postphotography, Concordia University and L’Université de Québec à Montréal, Montreal, Quebec, Oct 1-3. http://moisdelaphoto.com/evenements/colloque-international/

“Photographing the Canadian Environmental Imaginary: Lorene Squire’s Northern Wildlife Photography from ‘The Beaver’ Magazine, 1937-1942.” Visible Evidence XXII, Toronto, Ontario, August 19-23. http://visibleevidencexxii.ca/

“‘Wildfowling with the Camera’: The Self-Representation of Lorene Squire, Photographer.” Canadian Women Artists History Initiative, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, May 8-9. http://cwahi.concordia.ca/

2015

“Photographing the Imagined Future: the Landscapes of David McMillan.” Landscape, Wilderness and the Wild, The Landscape Research Group, Newcastle University, Newcastle-on-Tyne, England, March 26-29.

2014

“‘What has Been’ is Not Enough: Slow Violence in Photography.” Association for Literature, Environment, and Culture in Canada Conference, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ontario, August 6-10.

“The Banff Purchase: A Western Canadian Vision for Contemporary Art Photography.” SSHRC-funded Symposium: Networked Art History: Assembling Contemporary Canadian Art from the 1960s to the Present, Winnipeg, Manitoba, May 6-10.

“Settling the West through Image and Word: a Cultural History of Western Photography.” Speaking of Photography, Group presentation by the Canadian Photographic History Research Group, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, March 21. http://speakingofphotography.concordia.ca/index.php/2013-14-series/imaged-communities

2013

“Photographing ‘Slow Violence’: the Challenge of Visualizing the Future Environmental Crisis,” Universities Art Association of Canada/ Congrès AAUC, Banff Centre for the Arts, Banff, Alberta, October 18-19.

“Settling the West through Image and Word: a Cultural History of Western Photography.” Roundtable panel by the Canadian Photographic History Research Group (Concordia) at Meeting Places: an International Canadian Studies Conference, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia and Mount Allison University, Sackville, New Brunswick, September 18-21.

“Visualizing Extremes: Photography and the Representation of Climate Change.”  Association for the Study of Literature and Environment-Sponsored Panel “Environment and Media” at the 2013 MLA Convention, Boston, Massachusetts, January 3-6.

2012

“Thinking as a Group, Acting as an Art Historian.” Universities Art Association of Canada/ Congrès AAUC, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, November 1-3.

Panel Organized. “Collaborative Research in Art History,” Universities Art Association of Canada Conference / Congrès AAUC, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, November 1-3.

“Regarding the Earth as a Prize: Exhibiting and Framing the Environmental Photograph.” Fourth Biennial Conference of the Association for the Student of Literature, Environment and Culture (Australia-New Zealand), RMIT University and Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, August 31- September 2.

“Photographing Nuclear Power in the Evolving Age of Climate Change.” The Cultural History of Climate Change, The Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, August 27-28.

2011

“Photographic Power: Ethics and Aesthetics in Ecological Crisis.” Balance/Unbalance 2011 [Arts + Sciences x Technology = Environment/Responsibility], Hexagram, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, November 4-5. http://balance-unbalance2011.hexagram.ca/

Panel Organized. “Landscapes of Ruin.” Co-chaired with Dr. Luke Nicholson, Universities Art Association of Canada Conference / Congrès AAUC, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, October 28-29.

“Above, Below and Behind the Camera: the Perspective of Animals.” From Ego to Eco: Imagining Ecocentrism in Literature, Film and Philosophy, National University Ireland, Galway, Ireland, June 10-11.

“The Future Suspended off a Cliff: Ecological Crisis and the Temporality of the Photograph.” Staging Sustainability: Arts, Community, Culture, Environment, York University, Toronto, Ontario, April 20-22.

“The Mediated Evidence of Repeat Photography: Witness to the Change in Time and Landscape.” Colloque-atelier « Photographie, mobilité, intermédialité », Université de Montréal, Montréal, Québec, April 8-9.

2010

Panel Organized. “Capturing the Change: Photography, Landscape, Ideology.” Co-chair with Elizabeth Cavaliere, Universities Art Association of Canada Conference / Congrès AAUC 2010, Guelph University, Ontario, October 14-16.

“The Site of Display: The Travelling Show ‘Ashes and Snow’ and ‘The Nomadic Museum’.Travelling Photographies: Concordia Art History Graduate Student Association Annual Conference, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, March 12-13.

2009

“Questionable Moral Geographies: the Human-Animal Landscapes of Gregory Colbert.” Psychogeographies of Possibilities: Re-imagining Spaces in Critical Times: 2nd Annual Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference, University of Guelph, Ontario.

2008

“Making Modern Art Out of Landscape: a Contemporary Critique of ‘New Topographics’ and the Representation of Space.” Psychogeographies: the Terrain of Spectacle and Affect: 1st Annual Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference, University of Guelph, Ontario.