photo: Adrian Buitenhuis
Here in the School for Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University I teach in Art and Culture Studies, Film Studies, and the MFA in Interdisciplinary Studies. I also teach graduate students through Special Arrangements. My students are both scholars and artists (often the same person). I teach students how to think about art by drawing close to it and attending to their affective, perceptual, and finally conceptual responses. I teach artists to choose theoretical approaches that shed light on their practice. Teaching scholars to think in an art-friendly way, I privilege scholarly approaches that are less critical than descriptive, and pursue the delicate task of translating the experience of a work of art into the medium of writing.
Courses Fall 2011
FPA 111, Issues in the Fine and Performing Arts
FPA 310/811, Interdisciplinary Research Methods
Courses Spring 2012
FPA 412, Enfolding-Unfolding Aesthetics
News from current graduate students
MFA candidate Edith Artner’s graduating project “Reality Shelter,” is up until September 25 at SFU Woodward’s, 149 W. Hastings St., Vancouver
News from some of my former grad students
Gabrielle Hezekiah is Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine (Trinidad). Her beautiful book, Phenomenology's Material Presence: Video, Vision and Experience, is out from Intellect Books.
Aleksandra Dulic teaches in the Department of Creative Studies at UBC Okanagan. You can read about the Cinema of Braided Processes and other projects here.
Tarja Pitkänen-Walter is Head of the Degree Program in Painting at Helsinki Academy of the Fine Arts. See her artwork here.
Emily Rosamond is in the Humanities Doctoral Program at Concordia University. See her sculptural artworks here.
Jacky Sawatzky is in the Ph.D program in Sustainable Urban Development at the University of Aberdeen. See her interactive and handmade objects here.
Donna Szöke teaches in the Department of Visual Art at Brock University. See her video and new media works here
See Adrian Buitenhuis’s photography and films
Course at the European Graduate School, Summer 2010: “Deleuze, Aesthetics, and a Brush with Islamic Thought”
Recent teaching at Simon Fraser University
Fall 2011
FPA 111, Issues in the Fine and Performing Arts
FPA 310, Interdisciplinary Research Methods in Art and Culture Studies
FPA 811, Graduate Seminar in Contemporary Arts
Spring 2011
FPA 310, Interdisciplinary Research Methods in Art and Culture Studies
FPA 314, Creative Forces in Islamic Art
Fall 2010
FPA 335, Introduction to Film Theory
FPA 887, Special Topic: Graduate Seminar in Contemporary Cinema Theory
Graduate supervision at Simon Fraser University
Supervision
Senior supervisor, Edith Artner, MFA, “Surfbox Sitting on a Liquid Platform: A Note on Sensory Motility, or the ‘Architecture of Landing.’” In progress.
Senior supervisor, Natalie Sorenson, MFA, “The Life’s Work of Murphy Piltdown.” Defended, April 2010.
Senior supervisor, Emily Rosamond, MFA, “Chewing Chewing Chewing Social Space.” Defended, October 2007.
Senior supervisor, Amanda Christie, MFA. “Sensuous Machines: Embodied Mechanics of Cinematic Performances.” Defended, May 2007.
Senior supervisor, Jacky Sawatzky, MFA. “The RGB Project.” Defended, December 2004.
Senior supervisor, Sabita Majid, MA in History. “Bollywood’s Diasporan Audience.” Defended, May 2008.
Post-doctoral supervisor, Dr. Hudson Moura, “The Intermedial Frontiers of Exile in Intercultural Cinema.” 2004-2006.
Supervisory committee membership
SUpervisor, Helma Sawatzky, MA in Communication. In progress.
Supervisor, Adrian Buitenhuis, MFA, “HWY 99.” Defended, November 2008.
Supervisor, Sharon Kahanoff, MFA., “The Here to Gathered.” Defended, September 2008.
Supervisor, Donna Szoke, MFA. “Optics Out of Shadows: The Presence of Absence.” Defended, March 2007.
Supervisor, Aleksandra Dulic, Ph.D., School for Interactive Art and Technology. “Fields of Interaction: From Shadow Play Theatre to Media Performance.” Defended, May 2006.
Other graduate supervision
Auckland University of Technology, School of Art and Design
Supervisor, Azadeh Emadi, Ph.D. “Pa Dar Hava (Feet in the Air)—an unfolding of a Middle Eastern space of exile via moving image art.” In progress.
Helsinki Academy of the Arts, Finland
Doctoral advisor, Tarja Pitkanen-Walter, Ph.D. Program in Fine Arts. “From Amodal Perception To Abstract Representation – Re-Interpretation Of Modernist Painting.” Defended, June 2006.
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Toronto
Doctoral committee member, Gabrielle Hezekiah, Ph.D. “Experimentation, Mediation, and Knowledge: The Videos of Robert Yao Ramesar.” Defended, February 20, 2006.
Carleton University
Supervisor, James Missen, “Fringe Experientiality: Canadian Experimental Film and Video as Affective Cultural Theory,” M.A. thesis in Film Studies, Carleton University. Defended, April 2002.
Supervisor, Maria Ramadori, “Phenomenal Bodies: Relocating the Senses in Canadian Feminist Experimental Cinema,” M.A. thesis in Canadian Studies, Carleton University. Defended May 2001.
Supervisor, Barbara Rockburn, “Bonne Entente: Elliptical Elisions and Canadian Narrative Structure, M.A. thesis in Canadian Studies, Carleton University. Defended September 1997.
Graduate examination
Ilona Hongisto, “Soul of the Documentary: Expression and the Capture of the Real,” Ph. D. dissertation, University of Turku, Finland, 2011
Kjetil Rodje, “Seeing Red: Blood Images in American Cinema, 1958-1969, Ph.D. dissertation, School of Communication, Simon Fraser University, 2011
Nour Dados, “Lost and Found in Beirut: Memory and Place in Narratives of the City,” Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Communication, University of Technology Sydney, 2010
Mahmoud Yektaparast, "An Aesthetics of Anger," Ph.D. dissertation, University of Western Sydney, 2009
Mary Watson-Seoighe, “The Cutting Edge: Deviant Realisms and Cinematic Interruption,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cape Town, 2007.
Jennifer Deger, “Shimmering Screens: Media, Mimesis, and a Vision of Yolngu Modernity,” Ph.D. dissertation, Macquarie University, Department of Anthropology, 2004.
Numerous internal examinations, M.A. in Film Studies, Carleton University
Melinda Swalwell, “Aesthetics and Hyper/Aesthetics: Rethinking the Senses in Contemporary Media Contexts,” Ph.D. thesis, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology, Sydney, September 2002
Hudson Moura, “L’Image-exil,” Ph.D. thesis, Département des Littératures Comparés, Université de Montréal, July 2002
Michel Luc Bellemare, “ Guy Debord and the Future of Anarchism,”M.A. thesis, Mass Communication, Carleton University, August 2001
Jenefer Curtis, “Wait a Minute Mr. Postman! Neil Postman’s Critique of Media Culture,” M.A. thesis, Mass Communication, Carleton University, July 2001
Lazarus L.D.K. Dokora, “A Postcolonial Paradigm for Mass Communications in Zimbabwe,” M.A. thesis, Mass Communication, Carleton University, May 2000