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Alison Reiko Loader

Part-time Faculty, Cinema
Part-time Faculty, Design and Computation Arts


Alison Reiko Loader
Office: S-EV 6705  
Engineering, Computer Science and Visual Arts Integrated Complex,
1515 St. Catherine W.
Phone: (514) 848-2424 ext. 4789
Email: alison.loader@concordia.ca

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,  functions as a board member of the National Association of Japanese Canadians - Quebec chapter, and makes clothes for her dog.

Education

PhD, Communication Studies, Concordia University

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

Possible Movements/Grey Nuns Chapel, FOFA Gallery Vitrines, 2010
Anamorphic Cinema, Centaur Workshop, 2011
En Masse, FOFA Gallery Vitrines, 2015
Photo credit: Guy L'Heureux

Teaching activities

CART 212 Digital Media 1 • 2019, 2020

DART 441 Culture of Images • 2018-2022

FMST 218 History of Animated Film • 2019-2023

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

DART 491 Discursive Design • 2022

DART 281 Intro to Design Studies • 2021

FMST 320 Digital Media and Animation • 2024

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