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Matthias Fritsch, PhD

Professor, Philosophy


Matthias Fritsch, PhD
© Concordia University, Lisa Graves
Phone: (514) 848-2424 ext. 2509
Email: Matthias.Fritsch@concordia.ca
Website(s): PhilPeople

My research interests are social and political philosophy, environmental ethics, and 19th and 20th Century European philosophy (especially German critical theory and deconstruction). I work primarily on justice in relation to history, time, and the environment: what do societies owe the dead, if anything, and what are our normative relations with future generations, especially in relation to political institutions and the environment? While continuing to write on environmental and intergenerational ethics, I am at present working on a monograph on phenomenology and the sources of normative critical theory (SSHRC-funded, 2020-2025). As co-organizer of the award-winning research network Nature-Time-Responsibility, I foster intercultural, comparative-philosophical work on environmental justice.

Education

Humboldt Scholar, Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main (2010-2011)

Ph.D., Villanova University, Department of Philosophy (1994-1999)
Doctoral Research, Freie Universität Berlin, Department of Philosophy (1997-1998)
M.A., New York University, Department of Philosophy (1993-1994)
B.A., Universität zu Köln, Departments of Philosophy and of English (1990-1993)


Teaching activities

Kathleen Vaughan teaches graduate and mixed level (BFA to PhD) Studio classes, Special Topics classes in Community and Socially Engaged Art and Museum Education, undergraduate Photography (Light-based Media) and Community Art Education classes. 

Kathleen often locates her Concordia University teaching within Montreal's fertile community settings, linking her courses to 'place' via various community-based experiential learning initiatives. With colleagues Steven High and Cynthia Hammond, Kathleen is part of the Right to the City, a teaching initiative that encourages students to discover how learning with the city, and across disciplines, can enrich education while giving back to the community at large. Initially consisting of tethered courses taught sited at Share the Warmth in Pointe-St-Charles (2014-16), the Right to the City also now includes sistered courses that share common experiential, community-engaged and even activist agendas in various parts of the city.

Kathleen also links her teaching to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, where under the auspices of the institutional partnership with Concordia, she and her graduate students have developed socially engaged projects for Nuit Blanche (2016, 2017) and have created and produced two audio walks that bring a 'peace' perspective to 10 artworks in the Peace Pavilion. Awarded competitive Curriculum Innovation Funding (2014, 2015, 2016) for these initiatives, Kathleen also won the Faculty of Fine Arts Distinguished Teaching Award in 2016. 

A new step in experiential learning, Kathleen is currently developing a multi-level interdisciplinary course to be sited at the Icelandic Textile Centre in Blönduós, Iceland, in June of 2018. This course builds on her ongoing relationship with the Textile Centre following her artist's residency there in 2016. 

Selected thesis supervision

PhD Supervision


Donehower, Joanna Kathleen. (2021). Toward a Dramaturgy of Feminist Spatial Curiosity: Urban Performance Creation in Montreal. Concordia 2021. (PhD, Humanities: research-creation thesis).
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Ezcurra Lucotti, Maria. (2016). The Threads, Trends and Threats of the Wedding Dress:A Collaborative, Studio-based Dissertation. Concordia 2016. (PhD, Art Education: studio-based thesis).

Mandrona, April R. (2014). "What can we make with this?" Creating relevant art education practices in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Concordia 2014. (PhD, Art Education: community art thesis).


M.A. Theses 

Abbondanza-Bergeron, Andréanne. (2010). The post-art school transition : a journey through incompatible worlds. Concordia 2010. (MA, Art Education: studio-based thesis).

Boily Valois, Judith. (2018). Judith par Judith : Exposition identitaire présentée à travers une éducation muséale créative. Concordia 2018. (MA, Art Education: studio-based thesis).

Brindamour, Amélie. (2014). A Multidisciplinary Place-Specific Art Course Outline for the CEGEP Level. Concordia 2014. (MA, Art Education: studio-based thesis with a pedagogical component).

Del Vecchio, Deanna. (2010). PhotoLit : self-expression through digital photography and creative writing. Concordia 2021. (MA, Art Education: community art thesis).

Harake, Emma. (2019). Arabic Speaking Objects: A Collaborative Research-Creation Project Exploring Recent Immigrants’ Narratives of Displacement and Settlement. Concordia 2019. (MA, Art Education: research thesis with curatorial component).

Harel, Stéphanie. (2014). entrelacer la mémoire du présent. Concordia 2014. (MA, Art Education: community art thesis).


Kenny, Zachary. (2012). The Art Room: Reflecting on My Multiple Roles in the Creation of Art Educational Videos for Children. Concordia 2012. (MA, Art Education: studio based thesis).

Kim, Jeannie Kyungjin. (2020). Korean Chaekgeori Paintings: A Research-Creation Approach to Intercultural Art Education and Heuristic Thinking. Concordia 2020. (MA, Art Education: studio-based thesis).

Klohn, Bonnie. (2020). Welcoming the Wild Salmon Caravan: Socially Engaged Art as a Decolonizing Practice. Concordia 2020. (MA, Art Education: community art thesis).

Lecours, BJ. (2019). Drawing club as a participatory exploration of public engagement with art. Concordia 2019. (MA, Art Education: community art thesis).

Le Gallais, Jacob. (2017). Dead or Alive: Animal Bodies in the Museum. Concordia 2017. (MA, Art Education, Concordia University).

Levesque, Michel. (2014). Youth Enrichment Services Comic Book Project (YES CBP): Comics Creation with LGBT/Q Youth. Concordia 2014. (MA, Art Education: community art thesis).

Lickley, Sarah. (2013). Educational Experiences in Making Art: An Investigation of Process-Based Learning in the Studio. Concordia 2013. (MA, Art Education: studio-based thesis).
 
Niedermayer, Kay Noele. (2020). Stitching Stories of Place: Art-led participatory process with Barefoot College. Concordia 2020. (MA, Art Education: community art thesis).

Noel, Alex. (2020). Pulpy pedagogies: Following the paper trail in art education. Concordia, 2020. (MA, Art Education: Studio-based thesis). Thesis not on SPECTRUM.

Timm-Bottos, Anna. (2017). Seeing the Potential: A Canadian Creative Reuse Centre Case-Study. Concordia 2017. (MA, Art Education: research thesis).

Yetman, Heidi. (2018). A Movement in Three Parts: Artist, Educator and Activist. Concordia 2018. (MA, Art Education: studio-based thesis).




Publications

Selected publications

Vaughan, K., Levesque, M., Szabad-Smyth, L., Garnet, D., Fitch, S., & Sinner, A. (2017). A history of community art education at Concordia University: Educating the artist teacher through practice and collaboration. Studies in Art Education, 58(1), 28-38.

 

Vaughan, K., & Pyne Feinberg, P. (2017). Walking together: Shared authority and co-mentorship between two artists on the move. Visual Inquiry, 5(3), 249-261. Special Issue: From Mentorship to Intellectual Partnership.

 

Vaughan, K., Dufour, E., & Hammond, C. (2016). The ‘art’ of the Right to the City: Interdisciplinary teaching and learning in Pointe-St-Charles. Learning Landscapes, 10(1), 387-418. Available on-line at http://www.learninglandscapes.ca/images/documents/ll-no19/vaughan.pdf

 

Vaughan, K. (2016). Dog dreams: A collage reflection of love, loss, poodles, art and academia. In A. Cole (Ed.), Professorial paws: Dogs in scholars’ lives and works (pp. 176-207). Big Tancook Island, NS: Backalong Books.

 

Vaughan, K. (2015).  A möbius paradigm for artistic research: Entwining qualitative practices and the uncanny in a further elaboration of a collage method of inquiry. In R.M. Viadel, J. Roldán, & X.M. Medina, (Eds). Fundamentos, Criterios, Contextos en Investigación basada en Artes y en Investigación Artistica/Foundations, Criteria and Contexts in Arts-based Research and Artistic Research. Vol 4: Panorama de especialidades artísticas/Landscape of Artistic Specialities (31-58). Granada, Spain: University of Granada Press. Available online at http://hdl.handle.net/10481/34215

 

Vaughan, K. (2014). Art, enchantment and the urban forest: A step, a stitch, a sense of self. In A. Sandberg, A. Bardekjian, & S. Butt (Eds.), Urban forests, trees, and green space: A political ecology perspective, 307-321. London: Earthscan/Routledge.

 

Vaughan, K. (2013). Map as theory, theory as map: Meditations from the middle of the journey. POIESIS XV: A Journal of the Arts and Communication, 174-186.

 

Sinner, A., Levesque, M., Vaughan, K, Szabad-Smyth, L., Garnet, D., & Fitch, S. (2012). Reviewing an archive of practice: The historical unfolding of community art education, Canadian Review of Art Education.

 

Sinner, A., Mastrocola, P. & Vaughan, K. (2011). The colours tell me what to do: From graffiti artist to art teacher. BCATA Journal for Art Teachers 53(1), Special issue on Art and Design 2: 28-39.

 

Vaughan, K. (June, 2010). Creating ruins: From image to object in making Unwearableclothing. Mosaic: A Journal for Interdisciplinary Study of Literature (Special issue: Sculpture) 43(2): 185-201.

 

Vaughan, K. (2009). Research creation as material thinking: Reflecting on the context of making of two doctoral students at Concordia University, Montreal. (In association with two articles by doctoral students Danut Zbarcea and Natasha Reid.) Studies in Material Thinking (3). Available on-line at http://www.materialthinking.org/resources/v3/KV.pdf

 

Vaughan, K. (2009, April). A home in the arts: From research-creation to practice – or The story of a dissertation in the making, in action – so far! International Journal of Education and the Arts 10(13). Available on-line at http://www.ijea.org/v10n13/index.html

 

Vaughan, K. (2009, April). The importance of asking the ‘right’ questions: Considering issues of interpretation in art-as-research. Working Papers in Art and Design 5: The Problem of Interpretation in Research in the Visual and Performing Arts. University of Hertfordshire, UK. Available on-line at http://sitem.herts.ac.uk/artdes_research/papers/wpades/index.html

 

Vaughan, K. (2009). Mariposa: The story of a work of research/creation, taking shape, taking flight. In R. Dean and H. Smith (Eds.), Practice-led research, research-led practice in the creative arts. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

 

Vaughan, K. (2009). Finding home: A walk, a meditation, a memoir, a collage. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education 13(1): 12-24.

 

Vaughan, K. (2008). Inevitable. In D.F.A. Jacobs (Ed.), The authentic dissertation: Alternative ways of knowing, research and representation (pp. 117-120. London: Routledge.

 

Vaughan, K. (2007). Unraveling art and language, silence and speech in the making of Unwearable clothing. In J.G. Knowles, T.C. Luciani, A.L. Cole, L. Nielsen, and T.C. Luciani (Eds.), The art of visual inquiry (pp. 89-105). Toronto, ON & Halifax, NS: Centre for Arts-Informed Research & Backalong Books.

 

Vaughan, K. (2005, March). Pieced together: Collage as an artist’s methodology for interdisciplinary research. International Journal of Qualitative Methods IV(1). Available on-line at http://www.ualberta.ca/~iiqm/backissues/4_1/html/vaughan.htm

                                      


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