Book design plays an important role in making its content attractive. Participants of a recent Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture workshop conducted by artist Candace Couse show their creations of unique book covers in the display window of The Write Bookshop, 285 St. Paul’s Street, until 2 December 2019.
book, Couse, covers, workshop
Categories: Announcements, Current Students, Faculty & Instructors, News, Uncategorised
The Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture (STAC) is pleased to announce that Queer Publishing: A Family Tree designed and published by Bernhard Cella, has been shortlisted for LA MENTION SPÉCIALE DU JURY of the Paris Photo Aperture Foundation and to be awarded in November. This is a significant recognition of Cella’s important contribution to scholarship in this field. Founder of The Salon für Kunstbuch in Vienna, Austria, Cella is the book designer of the Small Walker Press (SWP), a project of the Centre and generously funded by the legacy of Marilyn I. Walker. Cella was the Centre’s Walker Cultural Leader for 2017-18.
“In the twenty years since 
Horacio Fernández first wrote Fotografía Pública (MNCARS, 1999), the first landmark book to position the scholarship of books and magazines as a topic of critical importance to the photographic medium, “book about books” has become a genre of publishing unto itself. Each year, the PhotoBook Awards jury sees at least one well-researched, richly illustrated publication that presents some new facet of photobibliophilia—often using the filter of a particular region or city or even a particular thematic niche. This year, however, the jury noted a rise in the number of books about books that exceeded expectation in terms of design, like Printed Photography in Venezuela; or ventured into new territory, telling the story of a single notable magazine, like Camera Austria International: Laboratory for Photography and Theory. Each of these volumes, in its own way, adds additional detail and texture to the evolving connoisseurship and scholarship dedicated to the photobook.” (from https://programme.parisphoto.com/programme-2019/le-prix-du-livre-photographique-paris-photo-aperture-foundation/la-mention-speciale-du-jury.htm, 19/10/18)
With the co-editors of the Small Walker Press, Professors Parayre and Derek Knight of Brock University, and accompanied by David Vivian, Director of the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts, Cella presented the first two volumes of the SWP at Belvedere 21, Vienna on June 19, 2019. The books were published under the theme of environmental degradation and include Inland, by Associate Professor of Visual Arts Shawn Serfas (Brock University) with creative writing by Atlanta-based New York Times journalist Richard Fausset and an essay by Associate Professor of Visual Arts Derek Knight, and The Quarry, by Associate Professor Adam Dickinson (Brock University) and artist Lorène Bourgeois (Toronto). The books are available for purchase from the Centre.
Brock University’s Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts (MIWSFPA) invites applications for a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Indigenous Art Practice at the rank of Assistant or Associate Professor.
The CRC in Indigenous Art Practice will be appointed to one or more of the School’s academic units, depending on the successful applicant’s area(s) of knowledge and expertise. We recognize that in Indigenous art there may be no formal divisions between visual, theatrical, and musical art forms. Brock embraces diverse perspectives and pedagogical practices; it is hoped that the CRC in Indigenous Art Practice will help foster new collaborations across academic units and assist the School and university to move towards Indigenization. The CRC will be welcomed into a tight-knit, friendly, and dynamic community of artists, scholars, staff, and students that respects, promotes, and actively engages with Indigenous arts and culture within the University and Indigenous communities.
Review of applications will begin on October 31, 2019, and will continue until the position is filled.
For more information see the complete posting at brocku.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/brocku_careers/job/St-Catharines-Downtown-Campus/Canada-Research-Chair—Tier-2—Indigenous-Art-Practice—Assistant-Associate-Professor-Tenure-Track_JR-1002413
CRC, Indigenous, jobs, position, professor, tier II
Categories: Announcements, Faculty & Instructors, News, Uncategorised
Two positions available:
full-time, this position includes full comprehensive benefits coverage, including tuition waiver.
closing on August 24. see https://brocku.ca/careers/
direct link: https://brocku.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/brocku_careers/job/St-Catharines-Downtown-Campus/Marketing—Communications-Officer_JR-1004102
full-time, 9 months, beginning September 2019
tailored for Brock students in Marketing and Communications but other disciplines should apply
closing on August 17 or until filled. see https://careerzone.brocku.ca
communications, coop, employment, jobs, marketing
Categories: Announcements, News, Uncategorised
Brock’s Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture is launching two new books, Inland and The Quarry, through the new Small Walker Press.
Brock’s Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture (STAC) has partnered with The Salon für Kunstbuch in Austria to launch an international book publishing division.
The new Small Walker Press will celebrate the publication of its first two books at an official launch event on Thursday, May 9 from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. The event will take place in the main lobby of the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts (MIWSFPA) at 15 Artists’ Common in downtown St. Catharines.
This year’s books were published under the theme of environmental degradation and include Inland, by Associate Professor of Visual Arts Shawn Serfas with creative writing by Atlanta-based New York Times journalist Richard Fausset and an essay by Associate Professor of Visual Arts Derek Knight, and The Quarry, by Associate Professor Adam Dickinson and artist Lorène Bourgeois.
Noelle Allen, Publisher for Hamilton-based literary press Wolsak and Wynn, will be the guest speaker for the event.
The launch is free and all are encouraged to attend.
“The University is the ideal place to promote book culture,” said STAC Director Catherine Parayre. “Working with different authors and artists to bring about the completion of a book project is a fully interdisciplinary challenge that is rewarding intellectually, but also a wonderful opportunity to work with expert graphic designers.”
Headed by STAC, the Small Walker Press addresses the research and creative interests of faculty members at Brock’s MIWSFPA and engages with authors, artists and academics alike to produce small, innovative publications.
Funded by the generous support of the Walker Cultural Leader Series and the late Marilyn I. Walker, the press publishes collaborative work that brings together authors and artists from the Niagara region, as well as those across Canada and internationally.
Parayre and Knight serve as its editors; Bernhard Cella, from The Salon für Kunstbuch in Vienna, Austria, is the press’s book designer.
Inland provides two distinct reflections on pollution and the consequences of human intervention on natural resources. It features work created by Serfas for his 2016 exhibition Inland, curated by Stuart Reid at Rodman Hall Art Centre, and creative writing by Fausset, whose work includes extensive coverage of the devastating environmental and socio-economic impacts of Hurricane Katrina.
The Quarry offers a reflection on a walk that Dickinson and Bourgeois embarked upon through the Glenridge Quarry Naturalization Site on the Niagara Escarpment in 2018. Dickinson contributes a poem for the book, which is accompanied by drawings by Bourgeois.
“We are very much looking forward to sharing these books with the public at the launch on May 9,” Parayre said.
The Small Walker Press is predicated on, and values, interdisciplinary co-operation, the exploration of image and text, and seeks to contribute to and participate in the promotion of book culture.
Publications will include exhibition catalogues, artist’s books, chapbooks, short essay format and creative writing as well as online art folios or editions, and recorded sound work or interviews.
Publications may be in English, French or other languages and books will be available for purchase at the launch.
They will also be available at Rodman Hall Art Centre, the Brock Campus Store, and The Salon für Kunstbuch in Vienna, Austria.
Learn more about the Small Walker Press by visiting the STAC website.
(From The Brock News, March 15, 2019 | By: Sarah Ackles)
Join Brock Associate Professor Adam Dickinson as he uses poetry to explore the dramatic impact humans have made on Earth’s climate, geology and biological makeup.
Presented by the Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture (STAC), Dickinson’s talk will be the next presentation in the Walker Cultural Leaders Series. It will take place on Monday, March 18, from 8 to 9 p.m., in room 211 of the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts (MIWSFPA).
“Writing in the Anthropocene: Poetics and the Environment” will focus on the intersections between poetry and science as a way of exploring new ecocritical perspectives and alternative modes of poetic composition.
Catherine Parayre, Director of STAC, said Dickinson is a fitting artist to welcome to the Walker Cultural Leaders Series this year because of his involvement with the Centre’s new Small Walker Press.
Officially launching this spring, the press publishes books by artists and authors working together on a given theme.
“The Small Walker Press is publishing works on the theme of environmental degradation this year, and Adam Dickinson’s work perfectly aligns with it,” explained Parayre. “He was inspired to write his contribution to the press after a walk he took with artist Lorène Bourgeois at Glenridge Quarry in the Fall of 2018.”
Dickinson is an award-winning poet whose work has been featured at prominent international literary festivals such as Poetry International in Rotterdam, The Harbourfront International Festival of Authors in Toronto, and the Oslo International Poetry Festival in Norway.
He is perhaps best known for his work The Polymers (2013), which was a shortlisted finalist for the Governor General’s Award for English-language poetry at the 2013 Governor General’s Awards, the 2014 ReLit Award for Poetry and for the 2014 Trillium Book Award.
He is also the author of Cartography and Walking (2002), Kingdom, Phylum (2006) and Anatomic (2018).
His poem “My Fear of Being Eaten” will appear alongside art by Lorène Bourgeois in the forthcoming Quarry, to be published by The Small Walker Press later this year.
His upcoming author’s talk is free and open to the public. No registration is required.
For more information, please contact Catherine Parayre at cparayre@brocku.ca
Generously funded by Marilyn I. Walker, the Walker Cultural Leader series brings leading artists, performers, practitioners and academics to the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts at Brock University. Engaging, lively and erudite, these sessions celebrate professional achievement, artistic endeavour and the indelible role of culture in our society.
As a new student in the Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture, you are invited to The New Student Welcome and Academic Orientation as your official welcome to Brock University on September 4! The orientation begins at 8 a.m. in the Ian Beddis Gym, where you’ll hear from President Gervan Fearon and enjoy an inspirational keynote to begin your day and kick-start your term. Afterwards, you are welcome to connect with your faculty and upper year student mentors to receive important information about academic supports and resources. Then, go check out the vendor and welcome fair, take a campus tour and to locate your classes, and get an orientation to the Brock Library. * Don’t forget to register for this orientation at Experience BU.
You are invited to then attend the Faculty of Humanities orientation session, beginning at 10:00 a.m. in the Sean O’Sullivan Theatre on Brock’s main campus.
There will also be a special orientation planned for STAC students specifically, taking place that same day:
Sept. 4: 2 to 6 p.m.
Marilyn I Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts Room 334
15 Artists’ Common
Beginning in 2018 the Executive of the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts will be awarding the Marilyn I. Walker Textile Art Award.
This award will be made to an undergraduate student who is graduating from the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts (MIWSFPA), Brock University; who is awarded, by vote of the Executive Committee of the MIWSPFA, the top prize for a piece of textile art produced and submitted by said student.
As the award must be granted to a student for the purposes of his or her continuing education and or development, students must also submit an expression of their intention to continue this education and or development.
For the purposes of this award, textile art is defined as a work of art that utilizes any and all forms of textiles, either natural or man-made, and in any form of original artistic expression.
For the purposes of this award, continuing education or development is defined as any form of post graduate education and development which the student may wish to pursue whether at a college, university, by way of apprenticeship at a technical institute or at a research facility.
For more information about Marilyn I. Walker see: brocku.ca/miwsfpa/marilyn-i-walker
We thank Marilyn I. Walker and her estate for the legacy of her generosity.
(Source: The Brock News, Thursday, April 20, 2017 | by Maryanne Firth. Photo caption: “Buffalo’s Silo City will play host to a joint art exhibition including the work of students and faculty from Brock University and the State University of New York at Buffalo. (Photo: Derek Knight)”)
Brock University and the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo have joined forces to showcase artists on both sides of the border while also highlighting a landmark area on the Buffalo River.
After two years of planning, Post-Industrial Ephemera: Soundings, Gestures, and Poetics will open Saturday, April 22 at Buffalo’s Silo City — an industrial space filled with repurposed grain elevators and other structures built in the first half of the 20th century.
Several silos will play host to the free art exhibition until Saturday, April 29.
The exhibition’s opening reception will run from 2 to 5 p.m. and includes, in addition to the artwork of both Brock and SUNY students and faculty, performances by the Harmonia Chamber Singers, Reinhard Reitzenstein, Lauren Regier, Continuous Monument, Catherine Parayre and Jim Watkins.
Parayre, event co-curator and an associate professor in Brock’s Studies in Arts and Culture as well as Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures, said the event developed from like minds coming together through networking opportunities at Brock’s Rodman Hall Art Centre.
It was co-curator Reinhard Reitzenstein, an associate professor of sculpture at SUNY-Buffalo, that introduced Parayre to Silo City, the inspiration for the showcase.
“Everyone is mesmerized because the structures there are stunning,” Parayre said of the area that is filled with buildings worn by weather and time.
The event, she said, is to encourage people to “reflect on the notion of dispersal.”
“Silos are built to maintain large networks of commodity exchange for human and animal sustenance. Here, however, the workers are gone; the buildings are exposed to inclement weather; the projects we bring with us will disappear, be dispersed or displaced.”
Silo City, she said, invites visitors to “become more perceptive to the transience of human endeavours.”
The exhibition is an opportunity to reflect on the aging structures, their history and nature’s efforts to reclaim the partially vacant space, she said.
Participating artists come from various disciplines including sculpture, arts, comparative literature, English studies, visual arts, studies in arts and culture, and French studies.
The showcase features an array of installations, neon signs, readings, paintings, prints, videos and sculptures.
Brock provided funding for the project through a longstanding research agreement in place between the two institutions, in addition to funding provided through Brock’s Dean of Humanities office.
“We’re very grateful for Brock’s support,” Parayre said.
Parking for the event is available onsite and guests are advised to dress warmly as temperatures within the silos remain brisk.
More information on participating artists and performance schedules for the opening reception is available online.
A one-day symposium held to relive the exhibition is scheduled to take place in September at Rodman Hall Art Centre in St. Catharines.
Brock University, Buffalo, Buffalo River, Catherine Parayre, Derek Knight, Exhibition, Lauren Regier, Post-Industrial Ephemera: Soundings Gestures and Poetics, Rodman Hall Art Centre, Silo-City, St. Catharines, State University of New York, SUNY
Categories: Announcements, Faculty & Instructors, In the Media, News
(Source: The Brock News, Thursday, April 13, 2017 | by Maryanne Firth)
A Brock Radio-produced series is hitting the airwaves overseas and receiving rave reviews for its efforts to highlight Canada’s rich culture.
Catherine Parayre, Associate Professor in Studies in Arts and Culture as well as Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures, has partnered with the University of Innsbruck and the Canadian Embassy in Austria to create “Kanada: Nouvelles littéraires and more.”
The seven-part radio series is one of a number of initiatives launched in 2017 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Centre of Canadian Studies at Innsbruck.
The show began April 4 and will run biweekly until June 20 on Innsbruck radio station Freirad.
Each hour-long instalment features interviews in English, French and German, as well as a wealth of Canadian music between segments.
“It’s all about Canadian culture, but it’s also about diversity and being able to use resources in different languages,” said Parayre, who is producing the series.
Since the initial episode aired, Parayre has received a wealth of positive feedback and has been invited to speak about Canadian culture and about Brock on other international platforms.
The project was born through a research agreement between Brock and the University of Innsbruck, which houses the oldest centre of Canadian studies in Europe.
The centre promotes research in any discipline that has a connection to Canada.
“You don’t have to be focused on literature or culture, you can be focused on biochemistry — as long as there is Canadian content,” Parayre said.
That ideal is reflected in the radio show, which covers a broad range of topics in some way related to Canada.
Some of the many guests featured throughout the series include Konstanze Zwintz, University of Innsbruck astrophysicist, Mark Bailey, Canadian Ambassador to Vienna, Herménegilde Chiasson, Acadian author and former Lieutenant Governor of New Brunswick, and Phil Cormeau, Acadian filmmaker. The shows also feature a variety of Canadian authors, musicians and artists.
Brock English Language and Literature Associate Professor Adam Dickinson and Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures Instructor Paul Savoie will also be featured on the show, in addition to Tabitha Lewis from Brock’s MakerSpace.
“It’s not just about getting people to know Canada — Canada in Austria is known,” Parayre said. “It’s about bringing together cultures, expressions and languages and sharing knowledge.”
The project was made possible with the assistance of Brock Radio, which has provided Parayre use of its professional equipment and the expertise of Brock Radio Director Deborah Cartmer to produce each session.
“Preparing this series has been a great experience in solidarity and intercultural and linguistic exchanges,” Parayre said. “Freirad is interested in continuing its co-operation with Brock Radio, which is very interesting for us. Scientists, professors and students at the University of Innsbruck regularly use Freirad as a platform for the dissemination of knowledge and for teaching.”
The Canadian Embassy and the University of Innsbruck will archive the radio series and will use segments for promotional purposes. The series will also be archived at Brock Radio with some segments broadcast locally.
“Kanada: Nouvelles littéraires and more” can be streamed online and airs live on Freirad from 11 a.m. to noon Eastern Standard Time.
The first episode is available online.
Adam Dickinson, Austria, Brock Radio, Brock University, Canada, Canadian culture, Deborah Cartmer, English, Freirad, French, German, Herménegilde Chiasson, Kanada: Nouvelles littéraires and more, Konstanze Zwintz, Mark Bailey, Paul Savoie, Phil Cormeau, radio, radio series, Tabitha Lewis, University of Innsbruck
Categories: Announcements, Faculty & Instructors, In the Media, News