Alison Reiko Loader teaches animation history, critical visuality, digital production; and makes stuff. Part media artist and part media historian, her past includes 3D game design in Tokyo and directing animated shorts at the National Film Board of Canada, while her collaborations with biologists mixed manipulated moving imagery, installation, and entomology. Her exhibitions and publications explore anamorphosis, camera obscuras, stereoscopy, scientific visual culture, race, gender, and animation, and her doctoral research is a feminist history of optical media in nineteenth-century Edinburgh. Funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), Alison completed her PhD in Communication Studies in 2018, and in the same year co-hosted the Society of Animation Studies annual conference in Montreal. She has taught part-time in Concordia University's Design and Computation Arts programs since 2001. She also teaches in the University's department of Cinema, and in the 3d Animation and CGI program at Dawson College. In her spare time, she reads with young children as a JAME volunteer, and makes clothes for her dog.

Education

Research interests

old optical media, video installation, animation studies, plant and insect-based art

Areas of expertise

feminist media history, critical visuality studies, archival research, media archaeology, digital animation & video, media installation, stereoscopy, anamorphosis, camera obscuras

View Alison Loader's CV

CART 212 Digital Media 1 • 2019, 2020

DART 441 Culture of Images • 2018, 2019, 2020

FMST 218 History of Animated Film • 2019, 2020, 2021

DART 391 & 392: Socio-Cultural & Environmental Research and Practice: 2019, 2021