Projects
Important questions and challenges that I pursue in order to push Art Historical disciplinary boundaries.
How do images and artifacts come to have certain meanings at a given time and place? Why do some representations appear clear and others ambiguous? Why and how do visibility and visuality matter? As these questions are about the significance of visual culture in everyday life, they are rooted in the construction and consumption of knowledge and frequently have pedagogical intentions. In considering these questions, I have pursued three related but different research paths.
Research that extends my curatorial work to the academic sphere can be seen in two articles in progress; one entitled, "Tugging at the Edges: Tracing Lesbian Lives in and near the Gay Archives, 1950-1980;" the other is an expansion of a conference paper on "Queer Exceptionality as the Everyday: Performing history in curatorial space." I was also a collaborator on a major SSHRC grant with Elspeth Brown (University of Toronto) on which I am investigating the ways in which the CLGA archival holdings can be used for outreach and education, primarily through the development of virtual exhibitions. And a large, ongoing project is a biography of John Wentworth Russell, a controversial Canadian Painter whose work was often featured in the mainstream press in the 1920s and 30s.