Élise Roberge, 2018
Biography
Dr Cynthia Hammond was born in 1969 in Hamilton, Ontario, on the traditional lands of the Haudenosaunee and the Anishinabewaki nations, near the Six Nations of the Grand River Reserve. Her parents, new immigrants to Canada, were settler-colonials from New Zealand. Hammond studied painting, sculpture, and art history at McMaster University in Hamilton, and went on to do her MA in Art History at Concordia, graduating in 1996. She then graduated from Concordia's Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program in 2002, winning the Governor-General's Gold Medal for her dissertation. After teaching at the University of Western Ontario and Carleton University, Dr Hammond held the first SSHRC-funded postdoctoral fellowship at the School of Architecture, McGill University, from 2004-06. She was hired by Concordia's Department of Art History in 2006, and became Chair of that department from 2013-16. From 2017-20 Dr Hammond was the lead Co-Director of the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling (COHDS). She is also a member of several research centres and institutes at Concordia and elsewhere.
Feminisms are central to Dr Hammond's interdisciplinary practice, and the way she researches and teaches histories of the city. Dr Hammond's research and creation address the roles of women, animals, and biological life in shaping designed landscapes and the built environment. Her publications have explored a wide range of topics, including the history of architecture, installation art, photography, as well as the politics of public history and the notion of collective heritage. Dr Hammond's work is always grounded in the specifics of a given site, and the living knowledge of residents, citizens, and occupants of different kinds. She explores this method in her 2012 book, Architects, Angels, Activists, part of which may be downloaded here.
Much of Dr Hammond's creative practice focuses on gardens and other kinds of living landscapes. Her most recent solo exhibition, Les Jardins des femmes, was shown at the School of Architecture at McGill in June 2019 (the catalogue may be downloaded here). In April 2023 Dr Hammond is an artist-in-residence at La Napoule Art Foundation in France. Dr Hammond also works with various creative collectives on projects that connect Montreal's residents with urban history, directly engaging citizens' own interest in processes of development and change (see http://cynthiahammond.org).
In 2020 Dr Hammond received a SSHRC Partnership Development grant "La Ville Extraordinaire", a multi-year, community-based oral history research-creation project that aims to foreground the urban knowledge and living memories of diverse, older Montrealers. This project, which has involved 10 graduate students at Concordia, will be exhibited at the new Centre des mémoires montréalaises in Fall 2023. Dr Hammond has also recently led a SSHRC-funded Insight Development grant on the spaces of restorative and transitional justice. This project includes her work in support of the Kanien’kehá:ka Kahnistensera, or Mohawk Mothers, a group of older women from Kahnawake who are fighting to decolonize Mont-Royal as well as key buildings in the city.
Research & Teaching Interests
History and theory of architecture, landscape architecture, and the city
Gardens, urban landscapes, and cultural landscapes
Gender and space
Feminist and posthumanist theory
Oral history and oral history research-creation
Place-responsive art
Community-engaged scholarship and creative work
Distinctions & Awards since 2015 (see CV for full list)
Concordia University Research Award, Category B, The Person and Society,
2018-19
Faculty of Fine Arts Teaching Award, 2017
Outstanding Contribution to Student Life Award, 2015
The 2018 University Research Award Ceremony
Photo credit: © Concordia University
Hammond's first book, Architects, Angels, Activists and the City of Bath, 1765-1965: Engaging with Women's Spatial Interventions in Buildings and Landscape (Ashgate 2012) explores cultural memory and public history in the world-renowned city of Bath, England, one of the few cities in the world to have been given World Heritage Status by UNESCO. Hammond approaches the past with the methods of the architectural historian and the site-specific interventions of the contemporary artist. Looking beyond and behind Bath's strategic marshaling of its past, and its reiteration of male architectural heroes, Hammond presents the ways that women of all classes shaped the built environment and designed landscapes of one of England's most architecturally significant cities. This book is also an intervention into the city's public memory. The author uses site-specific works of public art as strategic counterparts to her historical readings. Through them, she aims to transform as well as critique the urban image of Bath. At once a performative literature, an extensively researched history, and an alternative guide to the city, Architects, Angels, Activists engages with struggles over urban signification in Bath and beyond.
Recent undergraduate courses
ARTH 374 Montreal's Vernacular Architecture
ARTH 355 Spaces of Restorative and Transitional Justice
ARTH 450 Advanced Seminar in the History of Architecture: space, experience, architecture
Recent graduate courses
ARTH 668 Feminisms, Oral History, and Art History
ARTH 803 Thematic Questions: Spatial Practices, Spatial Stories
Thesis Supervision
Current PhD supervision
Vanessa Sicotte, PhD in Art History (in progress)
Current Master’s supervision
Ali Byers, MA, Art History (in progress)
Olivia Vidmar, MA, Art History (in progress)
Elizabeth Robinson, MA Art History (in progress)
Noémie Fortin, MA, Art History (in progress), “Quand l’art et la culture (re)dessinent le paysage : Communauté, environnement et tourisme au centre-ville de Lac-Mégantic”
Vanessa Sicotte, MA, Art History (2022), "Resistant Materiality in Interwar France: Charlotte Perriand Table basse manifeste pour Jean-Richard Bloch (1937), and Other Manifestos"
Lisa Massa, MA, Art History (2022), "Navigating Bella Figura: Inside the Childhood Homes of Six Second-Generation Italian- Canadian Women in Montreal"
Please see CV for full list of supervisions, co-supervisions, and committee memberships, etc
Many of Prof. Hammond's publications can be downloaded from: https://concordia.academia.edu/CynthiaHammond. For the full list of her publications, please see her CV.
Publications since 2018
2023 In press. With Shauna Janssen and Eric Craven. “Promenade parlante: Intergenerational Dialogue, Place-Based Memory, and Co-Creation” Routledge International Handbook of Participatory Approaches in Ageing Research. Ed. Anna Urbaniak and Anna Wanka. Routledge.
2023 Under review. “‘Where My Ancestors Reside’: Discovering the Architecture of Montreal’s Chinatown through Oral History.” For Small Modernisms, ed. Dustin Valen and Michael Windover. 5834 words.
2023 Under review. “Creativity, conviviality, and care: the shift from private to public in Montreal’s Notman Garden.” Le Carnet, Special issue: Femmes, institutions, espaces publics, Édith-Anne Pageot and Dominic Hardy.
2022 With Greg Labrosse, Vanessa Sicotte, and Marcela Torres Molano. “From caseta to cuarto: The spaces of transitional justice in Colombia before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.” In Interiors in the era of Covid-19. Ed. Penny Sparke et al. Bloomsbury Press, 2022. 113-126.
2022 “A Feminist Arcadian Landscape: The Later Work of Joyce Wieland.” For a special issue of the Journal of Canadian Art History, co-edited by Johanne Sloan and Mark Clintberg. 70-99.
2021 “Architecture, Photography, and Power: Picturing Montreal, 1973-74.” For Photogenic Montreal: Ruins and Revisions in a Postindustrial City. Ed. Johanne Sloan and Martha Langford. Montreal, Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. 217-245.
2020 With Carmela Cucuzzella (lead author) and Jean-Pierre Chupin. “Eco-didacticism in Art and Architecture: Design as Means for Raising Awareness.” Cities (July 2020). Online: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2020.102728. 8794 words.
2019 “Promenades parlantes: didacticism on the move.” Cahiers de recherche LEAP: On the Potential of Didacticism in Architecture / Du potentiel du didactisme en architecture. Ed. Carmela Cucuzzella, Cynthia Hammond, Chanelle Lalonde, Sherif Goubran. Montréal: Potential Architecture Books, 2019. 36-43.
2018 “Drawings for a Thicker Skin: A Conversation with Marc Lafrance.” Body and Society, Special Issue: Skin. Marc Lafrance, ed. XX.X (2018): 1-15
2018 “Anne Griswold Tyng.” 50 Pioneering Women Architects. Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation. http://www.bwaf.org/portfolio/pioneering-women-of-american-architecture/pw31/
2018 “The edge of her garden: Sveva Caetani and the frontier of potential.” Cahiers de recherche LEAP: Entre hétéronomie et autonomie : Penser l’architecture entre
discipline et profession/LEAP Research Notebooks: Between heteronomy and autonomy: Thinking architecture in between discipline and profession. Ed. Louis Martin & Jonathan
Lachance. Montréal: LEAP, 2018. 46-51.
2018 “The Keystone of the Neighbourhood: Gender, Collective Action, and Working-Class Heritage Strategy in Pointe-Saint-Charles, Montréal.” Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d’études Canadiennes, special issue on Critical Heritage Studies in Canada, guest editors Andrea Terry and Susan Ashley. 52.1 (2018): 108-148.
Peer-reviewed conference papers since 2018
2022“La ville extraordinaire: Heritage, Community, Conservation.” Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada. UQAM, 28 May
2022 "La ville extraordinaire: Memories of Urban Change and Diversity in Montreal.” Small Modernisms symposium. Carleton University, 12 May
2021 With Annmarie Adams. “Outside in the Garden.” Canadian Women Artists History Initiative conference, Modernism: Inside and Out (online). 30 September-2 October
2021 "A Landscape in Three Acts: Montréal’s Notman Garden.” 46th annual conference of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada (online), 30 May
2019 With Shauna Janssen. “Desiring the Dark: Feminist Scenographies, the City, and the Night.” Thrill of the Dark: Heritages of Fear, Fascination and Fantasy. University of Birmingham, Birmingham UK. 25-27 April
Invited lectures since 2018
2023“Oral History and Art History.” As part of the online event, Growing Canadian Art Histories, Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art, 29 March
2022Panelist, “Art, Research-Creation, and Aging.” Public panel organized by engAGE: Concordia’s Centre for Research on Aging, 2 November
2022 "The Spaces of Restorative and Transitional Justice.” As part of the webinar, “Restorative Justice and the Design of Intentional Spaces.” Zehr Institute (online), 20 April
2022 "Restorative Landscapes in an Anthropocentric World.” As part of Healing, Well-Being, and the Visual Arts, public panel co-organized through Speaking of Photography, Afternoons at the Institute, and the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture (CISSC), Concordia University, April 6
2021 Guest lecture for ARCH 680.16 Special Topics in Architecture: New Histories of Canadian Architecture (course instructor: Dr David Monteyne), School of Architecture, Planning, and Landscape, University of Calgary), 5 November
2021 "Landscapes.” Guest lecture for ARCH 251 Post-War Architecture (course instructor: Dr Annmarie Adams), School of Architecture, McGill University, 12 February
2020 “Promenade Parlante: Oral History, Research-Creation, and Older Montrealers' Knowledge of the City.” For the Librarians’ Research Forum Committee Brown Bag Lecture series, Concordia University, 20 January
2019 “Co-Creating with Sensitivity: Promenade Parlante.” Round table: “Curating and creating with sensitive memory,” as part of Listen, Explore and Learn: The Living Archives of Rwandan Exiles and Genocide Survivors, conference, Concordia University’s 4th Space, 10 December
2019 “Layered Landscapes: The Notman Garden in Milton-Parc, Montréal.” As part of History and Memory: A Journée d’étude to mark the retirement of Ronald Rudin. Centre for Oral History & Digital Storytelling, Concordia. 15 November
2019 Artist’s talk for Les Jardins des femmes, for the Crossing Boundaries and Constructing Linkages: The History of Montreal’s Golden Square Mile in National and International Context conference, McGill University, 20 June
2019 With Alex Tigchelaar. “An Architecture of Catastrophe: Montréal’s Red Light District.”Lieux et rituels de l’utopie et de la dystopie (Architecture de la catastrophe) : Séminaire annuel du LEAP et colloque international :, Université de Montréal, 16 May
2019 "Working-class women’s activism, the right to the city, and intergenerational storytelling.” International Women’s Week Festival, Vanier College, 5 March
For an up-to-date list of Professor Hammond's art and creative collaborations, please visit her online portfolio at http://cynthiahammond.org
