Faculty & Instructors

  • Join Studies in Arts and Culture for virtual open office hours!

    Catherine Parayre, Director of the Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture will be hosting virtual open office hours on:

    Tuesday 15 September, 2020 (3-4:00 pm, EST)

    She will be available for:

    • advising and support;
    • course and program opportunities;
    • outreach, experiential activities, and professionalization;
    • or just to say hello and have a chat.

    Join the meeting on Lifesize: https://call.lifesizecloud.com/5312972

    Join the Lifesize meeting using Skype for Business: https://skype.lifesizecloud.com/5312972

    Click to call from Mobile (audio only):
    Canada: +1 (844) 572-5683,, 5312972#
    United States: +1 (877) 422-8614,, 5312972#
    United States: +1 (833) 881-5208,, 5312972#

    Call in by Phone (audio only)
    Canada: +1 (844) 572-5683
    United States: +1 (877) 422-8614
    United States: +1 (833) 881-5208
    Meeting extension: 5312972#

    Additional phone numbers: https://call.lifesize.com/numbers

    Other ways to call: https://call.lifesize.com/otherways/5312972

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    Categories: Announcements, Current Students, Events, Faculty & Instructors, Future Students, News, Uncategorised

  • Welcome to the Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture: Orientation for 2020!

    (a screen shot from the welcome by STAC Major student, Maya Meyerman. Watch the video below.)


    Brock University is launching the first-ever Virtual Welcome Week.
    During this year of the pandemic the Orientation activities are all online.
    Watch the welcome below and visit the official Orientation page for all the details!


    The Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture (STAC)

    STAC Major student, Maya Meyerman has prepared this welcome message for you:

    Dr. Catherine Parayre, Director of the Centre, will be holding office hours on September 8th from 2-3 pm on Lifesize.
    Drop-in and say hi! (click here)

    Additional Office hours will be:

    • Tuesday 15 September, 3-4 pm
    • Wednesday 7 October, 2-3 pm
    • Tuesday 17 November, 3-4 pm
    • Wednesday 2 December, 1-2 pm

    Interiors, a curated virtual platform has been launched!  Interiors is the home of various creative projects by Affiliates of STAC’s Research Centre in Interdisciplinary Arts and Creative Culture, also with student exhibitions. Check out our Outreach Activities: participate and be published on the site!

    ti< is an online journal (ISSN 1929-4336) that publishes creative work combining text and image. It is primarily interested in creative work by students, their instructors, as well as by artists and writers whose work combines literature and the visual arts. All languages are welcome, including endangered languages. No translation is needed. Next issue: March 2021. Submissions accepted until 15 February 2020. Please send to cparayre@brocku.ca https://journals.library.brocku.ca/index.php/ti

    Check out the Advising Letter for more news about exciting opportunities at the Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture!

    STAC Majors: more info and regular updates are available on Sakai on the tab titled… ‘STAC Majors’.  Add this tab to your Sakai courses.


    The Department of Dramatic Arts, Music, Visual Arts, and the Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture are all part of the Faculty of Humanities.

    The Associate Dean, Dr. Neta Gordon, Professor of English, welcomes you to Brock University! She’s prepared an 11 minute video to introduce to you to the Faculty of Humanities:


    Michael Gicante is your Academic Advisor for studies at the MIWSFPA.
    He prepared this video for the April open House:


    Koreen McCullough is the Experiential Education Coordinator for the Faculty of Humanities.
    Watch her 3 minute presentation about Experiential Education opportunities at Brock University:


    The Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts

    Located at 15 Artists’ Common in downtown St. Catharines, the MIWSFPA is home to four academic programs. We are right next door to the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre on the main street of St. Catharines, St. Paul.

    Each program at the MIWSFPA is offering a special welcome to their students.  For example, if you are a beginning your studies as a major in Dramatic Arts, check out what that Department has scheduled for you and plan to join in the fun.  You are also welcome to join the activities of each program at the School even if you are only taking one course or beginning a minor program.  The activities and welcome messages from each program are listed below.

    Professor David Vivian, of the Department of Dramatic Arts (he teaches design and production for theatre), is the Director of the School:

    David will be hosting office hours on September 8, 2020, from 12-3:00 pm,on Teams.
    Drop in and say hi! (click here)


    We all wish you a very successful year at the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts.

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  • CrissCross, a new student exhibition at the MIWSFPA

    EDITOR’S NOTE: This exhibition is unavailable for viewing until further notice. It is closed as part of Brock University’s ongoing efforts to protect the health and safety of students, faculty, staff and the community in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Please check here again.

    CrissCross, a new student exhibition at the MIWSFPA

    March 5 – 28
    opening reception: March 12th, 5 p.m.
    (This is also the reception for the Artist Talk by the Walker Cultural Leader, Landon Mackenzie.)

    VISA Gallery and Student Exhibition Space, Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine & Performing Arts, 15 Artists’ Common, St. Catharines, L2R 0B5.

    The gallery is open Tuesday-Saturday, 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.

    An exhibition by students from the Studies in Arts and Culture and Visual Arts programs. Our hybrid assemblages celebrate incongruity and unfettered associations. Whether abstract or figurative, paintings, or texts, they are intended to trigger reactions, prompt comparisons, and challenge the usual. Beyond the immediate effect of surprise, they provoke, their apparent disparateness nevertheless generates, on closer view, a semblance of overall coherence.

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  • Industrial Niagara, a new exhibition at Rodman Hall Arts Centre, on view March 7

    (image: Shawn Serfas)

    EDITOR’S NOTE: This exhibition is unavailable for viewing until further notice. It is closed as part of Brock University’s ongoing efforts to protect the health and safety of students, faculty, staff and the community in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Please check here again.

    Industrial Niagara
    March 7-22, 2020, Rodman Hall Art Centre, Brock University
    Saturday, March 14, 2-4 p.m. Speaker Series

    Industrial Niagara, an exhibition, brings together key works by members of the Research Centre, Studies in Arts and Culture, Brock University.

    Visual artists Candace Couse, Catherine Parayre, Shawn Serfas, Donna Szőke, and ARTIndustria share their insights by responding to the natural environs and the features that distinguish the presence, loss or history of industry in Niagara’s landscape. A combination of hinterland, cataract and escarpment, waterways and canals, hydro-electric generators and high tension wires, manufacturing facilities, factories, subdivisions and farmland, this is the first of a series of reflections or aesthetic interpretations on the meaning of locale (genius loci).

    download poster

    Curated by Derek J.J. Knight, with a speaker series programmed by Catherine Parayre, on Saturday, March 14.

    Visit the Industrial Niagara Virtual Gallery.

    See the video produced by YourTV Niagara, on March 16, 2020.

    EDITOR’S NOTE: The below event has been cancelled as part of Brock University’s ongoing efforts to protect the health and safety of students, faculty, staff and the community in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

    Rodman Hall Art Centre will host a cultural event on Saturday, March 14, 2-4 p.m. featuring readings by award-winning authors Natalee Caple and Adam Dickinson as well as short reflections by Niagara residents on their observations, research or experience, from the impact of the Welland Canal to the generation of hydro-electric power: Clark Bernat, Derek Knight, Reinhard Reitzenstein, David Sharron, Penelope Stewart, and David Vivian.

    Open to members of the public this event is organized as part of the Research Centre’s outreach and to encourage future partnerships in an ongoing series of thematic projects.

    download the program for Industrial Niagara

    The Research Centre in Interdisciplinary Arts and Creative Culture acknowledges the support of Brock University: Centre for Studies in Arts and Cultures, Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts, Studies in Comparative Literature and Arts, Dean’s Office in Humanities, Research Services, and Rodman Hall Art Centre.

    New research centre fosters interdisciplinary approach to arts and culture
    [brocknews, alison innes. MONDAY, MARCH 02, 2020]

    The Research Centre in Interdisciplinary Arts and Creative Culture (RCIACC) establishes a network of researchers and creators across Faculties at Brock and beyond the University. The research centre is part of the Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture (STAC).

    “STAC has an established reputation as an interdisciplinary academic centre and it was therefore logical to home an interdisciplinary research centre in the unit,” says Associate Professor Catherine Parayre, who led the initiative with Associate Professor Derek Knight and is the Centre’s new director.

    The Centre will engage with a broad range of creative expression, including visual arts, dramatic arts, music, creative writing and translation, book and graphic design, cultural heritage, and photography.The Centre includes faculty from Arts and Culture, Visual Arts, Dramatic Arts, Music, Curatorial Studies, French Studies, English Literature, Digital Humanities, and Education.

    The centre will be doing outreach at Rodman Hall Art Centre through exhibitions and talks and in collaboration with the Willow Arts Community.

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  • Imagined Urban Gardens opens at Rodman Hall Art Centre

    Imagined Urban Gardens: Student Exhibition
    Jan. 30 – March 1, 2020

    download the poster

    Rodman Hall Art Centre
    109 St. Paul Crescent, St. Catharines, ON

    Responding to the explorations of urban architecture and its materials in Teresa Carlesimo and Michael DiRisio: more light than heat (on exhibition at the Rodman Hall Art Centre), Imagined Urban Gardens also reflects on today’s global warming and how we could live in the future.

    We dream of green spaces and pleasantly warm cities.
    Students in Visual Arts and Studies in Arts and Culture envision in text and image what could be in a livable world.

    See the YourTV Niagara video spotlight about this exhibition, featuring interviews with the artists and curators.

    Read the article by Bart Gazzola in The Sound STC.

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  • Donna Szőke presents ‘On Invisibility’, January 21 at the MIWSFPA

    On 21 January, the Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture welcomes artist Donna Szőke, Chair of the Department of Visual Arts and a member of the recently created Research Centre in Interdisciplinary Arts and Creative Culture, as a Walker Cultural leader for 2020.

    Szőke will present an artists’ talk “On Invisibility” at 7:00 pm at the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts of Brock University (MIWSFPA). This is a free community event and everyone is welcome to attend.

    Invisibility is this year’s theme at The Small Walker Press, a small press valuing interdisciplinary cooperation and the exploration of image and text, homed in the Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture (STAC) at the MIWSFPA.

    Szőke creates expanded animation, media art, video, drawing, and collaborations. She investigates immanence, embodied perception, and the fluidity of lived experience.

    In her artist’s talk, she will present her work and her current book project The Dark Redacted in cooperation with author Gary Barwin, to be published in April 2020 by the Small Walker Press.

    In an excerpt from the forthcoming volume, editors Catherine Parayre and Derek Knight write:

    Donna Szőke thoughtfully investigates the fluidity of meaning and presence. Rather than elucidating a concept or an experience, she proposes a semi-abstract perusal of collective or intimate issues. Offering a reflection on the evocative instability of the biographical and the personal, and opting for an approach close to autofiction, her work constellates subtle possibilities and its scope defies the limitations of certainty. The artist is a compelling storyteller for whom the quest for meaning and the vagrancies of that search are more significant than plain facts. For The Dark Redacted Szőke proposes traces of a fragile story and never-faltering endurance. Her sequence of images alternates beautifully detailed natural life – a buffalo, intricate vegetation – and minimally sketched-out human presence and personal objects. As a result, her work addresses the viewers’ intuition and sensitivity to the environment.

    The event is presented by the Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture for the Walker Cultural Leader Series, generously founded 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.

    Please join us.Join us on January 21, 2020 at 7-8:30 pm.  The presentation takes place in the Art & Val Fleming Smart Classroom (MWS 156), located on the lower level of the MIWSFPA.  Limited parking is available at the MIWSFPA, with additional parking nearby at the Garden Park/Carlisle Street Parking garage and adjacent lots.

    Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture: Walker Cultural Leader Artist’s talk
    ‘On Invisibility’, with Donna Szőke
    21 January 2020, 7-8:30 pm, MWS 156

    download the poster

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  • Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in Indigenous Art Practice: Candidate Research Presentations

    The Brock and wider community is invited to attend the presentations by the three Indigenous artist/researchers who are finalists for the Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in Indigenous Art Practice at the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts.

    Our candidates are visiting the Marilyn I. Walker School in January. Each will give an hour-long presentation and engage in an additional half hour of discussion about their current research interests and focus, and about what they would hope to achieve as a Canada Research Chair at Brock University in the next five years.

    MATTHEW MACKENZIE

    Research presentation 5 – 6:30 pm,
    Friday January 10, 2020
    MWS 156

    Edmonton playwright, director and producer Matthew MacKenzie (Métis) is Artistic Director of Punctuate! Theatre, as well as the founder and an Artistic Associate with Pyretic Productions. In 2018, his play Bears won Dora Mavor Moore Awards for Outstanding New Play and Outstanding Production, was named a co-winner of the Toronto Theatre Critics Outstanding New Canadian Play Award, and won the Playwrights Guild of Canada’s Carol Bolt National Playwriting Award. This past fall, Punctuate! premiered MacKenzie’s play The Particulars, which was named one of the top ten productions of 2019 by The Globe and Mail.

    MARK IGLOLIORTE

    Research presentation 11:30 am – 1 pm,
    Friday January 17, 2020
    MWS 156

    Mark Igloliorte is an Inuk artist born in Corner Brook, Newfoundland with Inuit ancestry from Nunatsiavit, Labrador. His artistic work is primarily painting and drawing. Igloliorte’s work has been featured in several notable national exhibitions including the 2015 Marion McCain Exhibition of Contemporary Atlantic Canadian Art, curated by Corinna Ghaznavi; Inuit Ullumi: Inuit Today: Contemporary Art from TD Bank Group’s Inuit Collection; Beat Nation, curated by Kathleen Ritter and Tania Willard; and The Phoenix Art-The Renewed Life of Contemporary Painting, curated by Robert Enright. In addition, Igloliorte has been profiled in features in Canadian Art magazine and Inuit Art Quarterly. Igloliorte is an Assistant Professor at Emily Carr University of Art and Design.

    SUZANNE MORRISSETTE

    Research presentation 5 – 6:30 pm,
    Wednesday January 22, 2020
    MWS 207

    Suzanne Morrissette is a Métis artist, curator, and writer. Using various research-creation methods Morrissette addresses the philosophical roots of historical and contemporary forms of injustice facing Indigenous peoples. Her current and future research looks at the role of locally-based Indigenous knowledges within Indigenous community-based curatorial practice as a way of entering into conversations about robust and unexpected strategies for representing Indigenous art both within Canadian and international contexts. Currently she holds the position of Assistant Professor at OCAD University.r University of Art and Design.


    Please share and post this poster in your community.

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  • Creative Book Covers!

    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.

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  • Bernhard Cella shortlisted for LA MENTION SPÉCIALE DU JURY for Queer Publishing: A Family Tree

    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.

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  • Tier 2 Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Indigenous Art Practice

    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

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