Visual Cultures of the Circumpolar North

This group brings together interdisciplinary perspectives on Indigenous, environmental, and settler pasts, presents, and futures around the circumpolar north to examine the complex visual and textual cultures of this region. Our areas of focus include northern landscapes, borders, and environmental histories; settler colonial expeditionary narratives; contemporary and historic militarisation and defence; cinematic and curatorial manifestations of north; and Indigenous arts, modernisms, and cultural heritage across Canada and the wider circumpolar north. We are confronting north-south dialogues and divides to draw attention to the cultural, social, and environmental dynamics between Indigenous communities and settler populations across Alaska, Canada, Greenland, the Nordic countries, and Russia.

Leads

  • Mark Cheetham, Art History
  • Isabelle Gapp, Postdoctoral Fellow in Art History
  • Ivana Dizdar, Ph.D. student, Art History

Members

Faculty, University of Toronto

  • Matthew Farish, A&S Geography & Planning
  • Melissa Gniadek, UTM English & Drama
  • Alexandra Rahr, A&S Centre for Study of United States
  • Alison Smith, A&S History
  • Charles Stankievech, Architecture, Landscape & Design
  • Rebecca Woods, A&S History

Faculty, outside University of Toronto

  • Amanda Boetzkes, Art History & Theory, University of Guelph
  • Allison Morehead, Art History, Queen’s University

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

  • Yasmin Nurming-Por, Art History
  • Rowan Red Sky, Art History

Graduate Students, outside University of Toronto

  • Andrew Bateman, Communication & Culture, York/Toronto Metropolitan Universities
  • Haylee Glasel, Art History, Florida State University
  • Margaryta Golovchenko, Art History, University of Oregon
  • Grace King, English, Penn State University
  • Hana Nikčević, History, Theory, and Criticism of Architecture and Art, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Phoebe Springstubb, History, Theory, and Criticism of Architecture and Art, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Postdoctoral Researcher outside the University of Toronto

  • Judith Ellen Brunton, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
  • Carmen Victor, Cinema & Media Arts, York University