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ARHI 301: Canadian Visual Culture
Art History 301: Canadian Visual Culture presents a variety of critical perspectives that help students understand display practices and cultural production in the context of Canadian history. The course introduces the basic premise of visual culture and its interpretative approaches toward different types of images. The course focuses on mass-produced images, such as photographs and prints, as well as on the technologies of display that implemented and dispersed historical and contemporary constructions of Canadian place, nationhood, citizenship, and indigeneity.
Unit 1: Introduction: What Is Visual Culture?
Unit 2: Historical Background: A Survey of Key Events and Themes
Unit 3: Points of Contact: Early Canadian Settlement
Sturken, Marita, and Lisa Cartwright. "Images, Power, and Politics." In Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture , 9–48. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Vance, Jonathan F. "The First Artists." In A History of Canadian Culture , 1–23. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Vance, Jonathan F. "The Meeting and Mingling of Cultures." In A History of Canadian Culture . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Gerald McMaster et al., “The Entangled Gaze: Indigenous and European Views of Each Other,” ab-Original (2018) 2 (2): 125–140.
Unit 4: Frontier/Metropole: Constructing a Visual Identity in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
Peers, Laura. “'Almost True': Peter Rindisbacher's Early Images of Rupert's Land.” Art History 32.3 (2009): 516–544.
Rusted, Brian. “Performing the Visual North: Image, Place and the Hubbard-Wallace Expeditions.” Cultural Studies 19.2 (2005): 253–285.
Potter, Russell Alan. "Introduction: Visuality and the Arctic Regions." In Arctic Spectacles: The Frozen North in Visual Culture, 1818–1875 , 3–13. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2007
Potter, Russell Alan. "A Foretaste of Those Icy Climes: Britain's Arctic Circles." In Arctic Spectacles: The Frozen North in Visual Culture, 1818–1875 . Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007.
Unit 5: Canadian Modernism in the Twentieth Century: Nationalism and the Group of Seven
Linsley, Robert. “Landscapes in Motion: Lawren Harris, Emily Carr and the Heterogeneous Modern Nation.” The Oxford Art Journal 19.1 (1996): 80–95.
O’Brian, John. “Wild Art History.” In Beyond Wilderness: The Group of Seven, Canadian Identity and Contemporary Art , edited by J. O'Brian and P. White, 21–37. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2007.
Whitelaw, Anne. “Whiffs of Balsam, Pine, and Spruce: Art Museums and the Production of a Canadian Aesthetic.” In Beyond Wilderness: The Group of Seven, Canadian Identity and Contemporary Art , edited by J. O'Brian and P. White, 175–197. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2007.
Unit 6: Colonialism and Practices of Display
McMaster, Gerald. “INDIGENA: A Native Curator's Perspective.” Art Journal 51, no. 3 (1992): 66–73.
McMaster, Gerald. “Museums and the Native Voice.” In Museums After Modernism: Strategies of Engagement , edited by G. Pollock and J. Zemans, 70–79. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007.
Garneau, David. “Imaginary Spaces of Conciliation and Reconciliation: Art, Curation, and Healing.” In Arts of Engagement: Taking Aesthetic Action in and Beyond the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada , edited by Dylan Robinson and Kevy Martin, 21–42. Wilfred Laurier Press, 2016.
Phillips, Ruth B. “The Issue Is Moot: Decolonizing Art/Artifact.” Journal of Material Culture 27, no.1 (2021): 48–70.
Robertson, Carmen. “Land and Beaded Identity: Shaping Art Histories of Indigenous Women of the Flatland,” RACAR: revue d'art canadienne / Canadian Art Review 42, no. 2 (2017): 13–29.
Unit 7: Representing Nation and Identity Through the Lens
Sontag, Susan. “The Image-World.” In Visual Culture: The Reader , edited by J. Evans and S. Hall, 80–94. London: Sage Publications, 2003
Poulter, Gillian. "'Men of the North': Canadian Sport Hunting." In Becoming Native in a Foreign Land: Sport, Visual Culture & Identity in Montreal, 1840 –85. University of British Columbia Press, 2009.
Belton, Robert James. “5.3.31. Hannah Maynard. Untitled . c. 1894.” Sights of Resistance: Approaches to Canadian Visual Culture . University of Calgary Press, 2001.
Belton, Robert James. “5.3.28. William Notman & Son, with P. Eugene L’Africain. The Bounce (a.k.a. “Habitant Blanket Toss ”) c. 1887.” Sights of Resistance: Approaches to Canadian Visual Culture . University of Calgary Press, 2001.
Belton, Robert James. “5.3.31. Hannah Maynard. Untitled . c. 1894.” Sights of Resistance: Approaches to Canadian Visual Culture . University of Calgary Press, 2001.
Payne, Carol. “Through a Canadian Lens, Discourses of Nationalism and Aboriginal Representation in Governmental Photographs.” In Canadian Cultural Poesis: Essays on Canadian Culture , edited by Garry Sherbert, Annie Gérin, and Sheila Petty, 421–441. Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2006.
Unit 8: Post-modern Issues: Race and Gender in Canadian Art
Nelson, Charmaine A. “Slavery, Portraiture and the Colonial Limits of Canadian Art History.” Canadian Woman Studies 23, no. 2 (Winter 2004): 22–29.
Jim, Alice Wing Mai. “Thoughts on the Meaning of Return: HKG><YVR.” Journal of Visual Culture 6, no. 3 (2007): 333–341.
Petty, Sheila. "(Re) Visioning Histories: Racism in Early Prairie Cinema." In Racism, Eh? A Critical Inter-Disciplinary Anthology of Race and Racism in Canada, edited by Camille A. Nelson and Charmaine A. Nelson, 326-336. Concord, ON: Captus Press Inc., 2004.
Gagnon, Monika Kin. "Introduction: An Other Conundrum?" In Other Conundrums: Race, Culture, and Canadian Art . Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2000.
