E.4.1 Canadian Art Matter: Revising the Survey

Devon Smither, University of Lethbridge

DJ Fraser, Concordia University

Our segment aims to pick up on Elizabeth Cavaliere’s two-part session at UAAC in 2018 which focused on collaboration as a means of interrogating the teaching of Canadian art history. The history of art is/has been strongly rooted in national narratives that often elide issues of connectivity to larger art historical discourses in the development of both historical and contemporary art history. We propose to discuss the ways in which we rethink Canadian art histories (and our survey courses) to emphasize transnational, transhistorical, and transdisciplinary connections rather than reinforce an outdated focus on nationalism and the visual arts. This is particularly important given the complicated and interconnected issues of regionalism, colonialism, and diaspora in Canadian art. Emerging from a national and chronologically-organized discourse in art historical education, this has not been easy work. Our revisioning of Canadian colonial-settler art history survey courses ensures that they are more accessible, inclusive, and critical. We argue that to teach Canadian art history as part of larger, transnational and comparative history contributes to the decolonization of the discipline. Integrating diverse perspectives, other voices, and collaborative pedagogical approaches to teaching allows the development of knowledges in the lecture hall as relative to each other and nation-to-nation dialogue within the current borders of Canada. As Marsha Meskimmon has stated, this method of teaching forces us as educators...

During the roundtable we intend to offer brief tangible examples of just how we “transnationalize” Canadian art history while simultaneously teaching core visual analysis and literacy skills foundational to the discipline and which make students active learners.

E.4.2 Of Material Benefit: Thinking Beyond the Textbook and Outside of the Course Pack in the Canadian Survey

Elizabeth Anne Cavaliere, Queen's University

In the Canadian context, there have been few efforts to create a definitive and canonical art and visual history textbook. Until recently, and often still so, the introductory survey to Canadian art history has leaned on a single-authored text written in the early nineteen-seventies that focuses almost exclusively on painting and takes a chronological and biographical approach. More recent efforts to consolidate the field in the published format have used a multi-authored or edited volume approach to grapple with the range of media used in the visual arts as well as the regionalism that characterises any overview of art in Canada. The limitations of a textbook however, even with best efforts and intentions, are numerous. A “survey text” cannot possibly deal with the entirety of a complex, colonial, international, and transnational visual history. So why have instructors continued to lean on these texts in the creation of their survey courses? And, if we do away with them, then where and how do we start to design our survey course? The safety of a textbook in course design takes the pressure off of instructors to make choices about what to include and exclude. The risk is that going it alone may very well replicate the exclusionary nature of a textbook. But, what if we weren’t alone? What if we turned to collaboration? Not only can collaboration diversify the voices and content within a course, but also actively foster inclusivity and embody experiential and transformational learning. Thinking beyond the textbook and outside of the standard course pack, this contribution to the roundtable will share strategies and prompt discussion that encourage us to mobilize community engagement and our own knowledge networks as a pedagogical practice that pushes out into the local, national, physical, and virtual.

E.4.3 Activating the Remote Classroom: Lessons Learned and Questions Unanswered

Jen Kennedy, Queen's University

Johanna Amos, Queen’s University; Concordia

Following the transition to remote learning in March 2020, we became interested in how we might move the active learning practices we had developed for our physical classrooms into the digital space. As in our other collaborative work, which is grounded in theories of radical and accessible pedagogy, we remained focused on the concrete and the practical, and hosted a series of workshops over the summer that aimed to develop assignments and activities that could be used in the remote classroom, and which would develop students’ skills in lateral thinking and collaboration. For our contribution to this year’s UAAC Pedagogy Caucus, we will be sharing some of the ideas generated during this workshop series, considering how they might meet the challenges of accessibility and inclusion in remote art history and studio classrooms. Since UAAC is held at the midpoint of the semester for most Canadian universities, we will also take this opportunity to discuss which of the strategies that we used worked, which failed, and how we might use the lessons we learn over th first months of remote teaching to improve them.

E.4.4 Reflections on Teaching Indigenous and Canadian Visual Arts

Erin Sutherland, University of Alberta

I will contribute to this year’s pedagogy caucus by bringing forward my own experience teaching Indigenous and Canadian visual arts to undergraduate students. Specifically, I will reflect on my experience transforming the classroom into a site of experiential learning, one which allows students hands-on experiences to create, curate and explore visual processes. I will discuss my class on Indigenous cultural production, which teaches students about various aspects of Indigenous arts while learning to tan a deer hide. I will also reflect on my engagement in kitchen table theory and methodologies of visiting as central to my pedagogy.