The art of expression
This is the eighth in a series of 13 profiles of some of Concordia’s leading educators. Here, NOW profiles MJ Thompson, assistant professor in the Faculty of Fine Arts.
With one microphone for her and another for students, MJ Thompson often roams the auditorium where 450 students are taking FFAR 250 - The Visual and Performing Arts in Canada.
The assistant professor in Concordia’s Faculty of Fine Arts encourages students to share their perspectives on the meaning of performance. As a dance scholar, she knows her notions will differ from those pursuing studies in art, drama or music.
“We look at key words through the lens of various disciplines so that students have a better understanding of their spectrum,” Thompson says. “The goal is to debate and to build a shared vocabulary across disciplines.”
Thompson presents artwork to help students to practice articulating their own responses to questions about overarching concepts such as modernism or abstraction.
“Concordia has such a rich body of students that I’m really driven by the desire to get to know them and what they’re thinking about and working on,” she says.
She thoroughly prepares each class as a series of 10- to 20-minute blocks punctuated by space for questions, discussions, writing sessions, and occasional experiments that aren’t typical for large classes.
“One time she divided everyone into groups that each presented a dance based on what we had just learned,” says Sam Burd, a fine arts graduate student who has worked as one of the course’s teaching assistants.
“She wants students to relate their understanding of the important concepts,” he says. “She knows that if students have some kind of ownership of their ideas, their work will be stronger.”
Thompson says it’s “super exciting” to see how people come together around a specific problem or to create something new. “It’s kind of insane but I try running every class like a workshop because I want students to get inside huge ideas and grapple with big questions by discussing them with each other, and by writing about them on their own,” she says.
Her other course is an introduction to performance-based research methodologies. “We’re looking at the lived experience – what the body knows and how that knowledge and experience can be put into academic language,” she explains. “There’s a lot of back and forth between doing and writing.”
Writing is at the heart of everything. She is constantly looking for opportunities for students to improve their writing skills. Last year, for example, she helped Burd to set up a creative writing seminar.
“Giving students the opportunity to verbalize their thoughts really helps them to write those ideas more clearly,” he says.
For Thompson, writing constantly offers new challenges. A PhD graduate in Performance Studies from New York University, she joined Concordia in 2010 as a Lillian Robinson scholar at the Simone de Beauvoir Institute. The scholarship facilitated her research for a biography about dance icon Louise Lecavalier.
“The challenge is to write a history that honours the “invisible work” she did in practice studios and rehearsals that added such defining shape and richness to dances often understood as exclusively authored by choreographers.”
Related links:
• Concordia's Faculty of Fine Arts
• Simone de Beauvoir Institute
• Lillian Robinson Scholars
Other profiles:
Jordan LeBel: “The makings of a great teacher” — NOW, February 20, 2013
Philippe Caignon: “Using blogs and wikis as teaching tools” — NOW, February 26, 2013
Lisa Lynch: “Helping journalism students get in the game” — NOW, March 5, 2013
Juan Carlos Castro: “Social networks, social pedagogy” — NOW, March 26, 2013
Alexandre Enkerli: “Using technology to facilitate dialogue” — NOW, April 3, 2013
Arshad Ahmad: "Moderating MOOCs" — NOW, April 3, 2013
Mamoun Medraj: "Terms of engagement" — NOW, April 30, 2013