PhD seminars

ARTH 805 Critical Examination of Artistic Context: Probing Peripherality: A workshop-seminar on para-academic methods

• Instructor: Dr. Rebecca Duclos

This workshop-seminar exposes and explores research methods that are not always associated with academic or scholarly analysis, but which predominate in everyday life and creative practice. What constructs have separated and hierarchized certain methods as “acceptable” over others in the academic sphere? As we probe this question we open ourselves up to ask: might intuition and improvisation be considered as methods? Is there a role for chance in research? What are bold forms of scholarly subjectivity? Are there other ways to find “voice” through experimental writing practices? As this is a hybrid workshop-seminar, we will not only read about and discuss a rich selection of these para-academic methods, but will actively try them out in practice together. We will investigate concepts and methods such as parataxis, unconscious scanning, digression, lucid dreaming, chance operations, improvisation, collective composition, dérive, détournement, and amanuensis. Participant presentations will be specifically directed at subjectively describing a method of choice that will be personally engaged, accompanied by a critical analysis of how the method “worked” and how it “worked upon” the participant. This analysis will intentionally draw from non-art world contexts such as neuroscience, psychology, poetry, philosophy, anthropology, ecology, urban studies, literary theory, library science, indigenous studies, etc, Students are encouraged to place their research questions and directions at the centre of this seminar but also to be open to workshopping their own and others’ ideas and approaches in an effort to unlock new realizations about ongoing projects.

ARTH 809 Theory and Methods of Art History: Artists and Archival Methods

• Instructor: Dr. Gabrielle Moser

This seminar examines the archive as a site of site of conflict that unsettles any static sense of self, national identity, or of colonial history as continuous and already complete, asking how opposing art historical narratives emerge from encounters with the same documents, images, and objects. What can the archive remember and what does it forget? What do archives tell us about the cultures—and contexts—in which they are amassed? What imaginings are provoked in the spaces of archival collections? What ethical obligations bind the writer of art history to their subject(s)?

Beginning from Ariella Aïsha Azoulay’s foundational concept of “potential history,” the course invites students to examine the crucial role artists, art historians and curators have played in intervening in the archive, and in building counter-archives. It does so by examining key theoretical and philosophical texts about archives—drawn from philosophy, museum studies, gender and feminist studies, history, art history, psychoanalysis and queer theory—while also offering opportunities to gain hands-on experience in real-world archives. In this way, the course hopes to open up the problematic binary of theory and practice to help students articulate research questions and employ techniques of interpretation that are both theoretically and strategically sound. In particular, students will develop a vocabulary for thinking about research methodology and defining their research archive. This means selecting and working with local, artistic and digital archives to investigate the ways in which visual and written materials can provoke a deeper understanding of the subject and object of their research, their personal investments in the questions they ask, and what’s at stake in their archival practices.