Student profile

Roxanne Cornellier

Faculty

Program

Roxanne Cornellier is an emerging scholar from Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montréal. She completed her Bachelor’s degree at McGill University where she double majored in Art History and Latin American & Caribbean Studies. At McGill, she was part of the team led by Dr. Charmaine Nelson to research and document James McGill’s connections to slavery and to publish the Bicentenary Recommendations. She is part of the Advisory Board - Council on Student Initiatives for the Slavery North Initiative. Cornellier is now a graduate student in the department of Art History at Concordia University. For her Master's thesis, she is examining the archival records of a Montreal-based troupe, the Young Men Hebrew Association Minstrels (Y Minstrels), working primarily within the YM-YWHA and Irving Silverman fonds from the Jewish Public Library Archive. She uses the Y Minstrels as a case study to reflect on how whiteness is produced and reproduced. She is particularily interested in how the troupe's blackface performances and their persisting presence in the visual archives reflect the social, political and cultural anxieties in Montréal in the early twentieth century vis-à-vis the creation of a nationalist identity and the construction and (re)definition of whiteness. Cornellier currently works as a Teaching Assistant in the departments of Interdisciplinary Fine Arts and Art History, and as the coordinator for the Abolition Worlds working group. She is also the Co-President of the Art History Graduate Student Association (AHGSA). Cornellier completed a research internship over the summer of 2023 at The Center for Studying Structures of Race in the Maurice Berger Memorial Archive and Library, working under the supervision of Dr. Jesse Bucher to create collections overviews for the Racist & Stereotypical and Black History collections.

Working Thesis Title: Performing Blackness/Archiving Whiteness: The Y Minstrels, 1927-1951

Supervisor: Dr. John Potvin

Research Interests:

Critical whiteness studies
Archives
Oral History
Abolitions
Black Canadian and diasporic studies
Theories of representation

Teaching Assistantships:

FFAR 298: The Culture of True Crime, Dr. Karen Herland
ARTH 300: Art Historical Methods, Dr. Farrukh Rafiq
ARTH 366: Studies in 19th Art & Architecture, Dr. Farrukh Rafiq
ARTH 283: The Life and Work of Lala Deen Dayal, Dr. Farrukh Rafiq
ARTH 384: Theories of Representation: Art & Activism Online and in the Streets, Dr. Reilley Bishop-Stall

Research Assistantships:

Afrofuturisms/Black Lives Matter, Dr. Alice Ming Wai Jim (2022)

Publications:

Cornellier, Roxanne. “ Blackface Minstrelsy Imagery and Political Caricatures: John Wilson Bengough, Henri Julien & the Complicity of Canadian Newspapers,” Asterisk* Journal of Art and Art History, Yale University, issue 2 ( 2020): 14-18. asteriskjournal.org/fall-2020
Roxanne Cornellier, Amalie Alver Løseth and Denisa Marginean. "Slavery and Western Universities and the Early History of McGill University." Slavery and McGill University: Bicentenary Recommendations, ed. Charmaine A. Nelson (2020): 67-75. https://blackmaplemagazine.com/research/slavery-research/
Cornellier, Roxanne. “The Inscribed Passport: Country Marks, Branding and the Body of the Enslaved in the Transatlantic Slave Trade.” Chrysalis 1, no. 8 (2020): 61-69. blackmaplemagazine.com/Chrysalis
Cornellier, Roxanne. “Miguel Cabrera’s Casta Paintings Series: The Oppressive Colour Consciousness in New Spain.” VOCES 6, no. 1 (2020): 171-185. VOCES 2020
Cornellier, Roxanne. “Bill of Sale for Isabella/Bell (1778).” Bills of Sales for Enslaved People: Quebec, Canada, ed. Charmaine A. Nelson (2020): 8-12. https://blackmaplemagazine.com/research/slavery-research/
Cornellier, Roxanne. “Sally Elizabeth Wood: Defying Traditional Womanhood of the White Bourgeois Canadian Society Through Photography.” Yiara Magazine, vol. 9 (2020).
Cornellier, Roxanne. “An Omitted History of Oppression: Public Slave Auctions at Place Royale, Montréal,” Slavery Tour, ed. Charmaine A. Nelson. https://blackmaplemagazine.com/research/slavery-research/

Conferences:

black symposium noir

"The YMHA Minstrels: Blackface Performances on Montréal's Stages" Black In/Visibilities. Black Radical Thought & Praxis in Montreal, Maison de la Culture de Côte-des-Neiges, Montreal, QC. March 15-16, 2024.

49th Annual Cleveland Symposium

“Resculpting Vicissitudes: Anthropocene, Art & the Atlantic” Session II: Water as Medium. Surface Tension: Water, Waterways and Art,

Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio. October 13, 2023.

Virginia Conference on Race

“Staring Back: The Portraits of Roanoke County Courthouse Archives.” Panel: Reclaiming History. After/Math, Virginia Conference on Race, Roanoke College, Salem, Virginia. March 30-31, 2023.

10th Emerging Scholars Symposium on History, Digital Storytelling, and Creative Practice

“Mapping White Supremacy: Monuments, Memory & Oral History.” Panel: Stories from the Archives. Storytelling and Intergenerational Memory, Centre for Oral History & Digital Storytelling, Concordia University, Montreal. March 23-24, 2023.

Social Media:

@corny.archives