Ryan Bruce is an ethnomusicologist, jazz historian and saxophonist. His research concentrates on the transition of jazz styles from the 1950s–1960s (bop and the jazz avant-garde) with investigations in jazz historiography, improvisation, musical analysis, and interdisciplinary comparisons to other avant-garde art forms. His work includes special focus on collaborating with performers to create digital resources for teaching jazz history, improvisation, and world music traditions.

Ryan holds a PhD in Music from York University and has published articles on jazz criticism, musical analysis, and specific musicians for the current Grove Dictionary of American Music. He is also an active teacher and performer of jazz and free improvisation on saxophone.
(2022)

Rebecca has worked in professional theatre, municipal cultural service management, as an arts consulting and as a teacher. Her career includes running her own theatre company and positions at the Canadian Stage Company, The Factory Theatre, Janis A. Barlow & Associates and the City of St. Catharines. In the latter, she was responsible for the City’s art collection and public art programming, and she managed the planning study for the development of the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts and the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre. She teaches arts management and cultural policy and planning.
(2022)

Marlie Centawer has taught with the Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture and Department of Visual Arts at Brock University since 2010. She has also worked with the Centre for Pedagogical Innovation (CPI) as an Instructional Skills Workshop Facilitator since 2009.

Marlie is also an assistant and archivist to the British artist and Indica Gallery co-founder John Dunbar. Her research interests include popular music and youth culture, counterculture, photography, art history, visual culture, cinema, psychogeography, rock and roll.

Marlie has taught the courses STAC 1P96: Language for the Arts: Introduction, STAC 1P97: Language for the Arts: Interdisciplinary Approaches, STAC 1F98: Language for the Arts, STAC 1P99: The Culture of Noise, STAC 3P99: Interpretive and Critical Writing in the Arts, STAC 3P01: Media Transformations in the Creative Arts, and STAC 3P41: Approaches to Curatorial Practice.
(2022)

With several years of teaching experiences at Brock University as a TA, marker-grader, and Instructor, Alisa Cunnington also has experience writing in a variety of genres. She has published in several art exhibition catalogues for the Grimsby Public Art Gallery, has written technical and educational documents, and tries her skills at creative writing and poetry.

PhD, Western University
MA, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
BA, Brock University

905 688 5550 x5065

Sonya Marie de Lazzer is the Gallery Coordinator of the Visual Arts Gallery and Student Exhibition Space (MIWSFPA) and works in consultation with preparators, curators, artists, students, as well as public outreach. Sonya brings extensive museum and art gallery experience in the areas of curation, programming, exhibition writing, design, and installation. She also teaches in the areas of art history, visual culture, and curation. de Lazzer is trained as a historian of visual culture with an interest in souvenirs, collectibles, and collections. Her research is focused on the visual culture and visual history of Niagara Falls as a tourist site, with investigations into contemporary notions of the sublime that expand on recreational, social, and immersive experiences within landscapes, specifically, the recreational sublime and sublime fiction(s). Her research constellates the material culture of mementos, souvenirs, tourist attractions and experiences. (2023)

Kate Leathers has worked in the arts sector for nearly three decades. As an arts manager, project leader, and technician, they have worked for dozens of theatres, art galleries, and cultural organizations across Canada. Kate’s artistic management practice includes organizational leadership, project management in multiple disciplines, and consultancy work with Janis A. Barlow & Associates and private clients. Most recently, they were the General Manager at the Theatre for Young Audiences company Carousel Players from 2017 to 2023. They are teaching STAC 4P41: Arts Management.

Jill Planche has a professional background in marketing and fundraising for theatre, opera, film and visual arts, including the Shaw Festival, TIFF and the McMichael Gallery. Her academic focus is theatre and its role in social and political discourse, particularly decolonization and social justice. She has a PhD in English Literature and a PhD from Brock’s Interdisciplinary Humanities program. Her dissertation, The Larger Stages: The Becoming ‘Minor’ of South African Theatres, focuses on the space of post-apartheid South African theatre. Jill teaches at Brock University (HUMA 1P50 The Master Student and, previously, COMM 3Q97 Event Management) and Ryerson Chang School’s Fundraising Management program. Jill is teaching STAC 3P93 Producing a Performance Event.  jplanche@brocku.ca
(2022)

Eric Schmaltz is an intermedia artist, poet, scholar, and editor. His research focuses on contemporary and twentieth-century Canadian avant-garde literature and art, with a special emphasis on intermedial poetics, small press cultures, and sound studies. His creative work has been published, exhibited, and performed nationally and internationally in Canada, the United States, Ireland, Greece, and elsewhere. His writing can be found in literary journals, including The Capilano Review, Arc Poetry, Berkeley Poetry Review, Trinity Poetry Review, and elsewhere.

Eric holds a Ph.D. in English from York University and, from 2018-2019, he was an SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the English Department at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Borderblur Poetics: Intermedia and Avant-gardism in Canada, 1963-1988 (University of Calgary Press) and Surfaces (Invisible Publishing), editor of Another Order: Selected Works of Judith Copithorne (Talonbooks), and co-editor of I Want to Tell You Love by bill bissett and Milton Acorn. He lives in Toronto and is teaching STAC 1P96 (2023).

Andrew is an educator, arts facilitator, and public speaking instructor. Originally from Toronto, Andrew holds a doctoral degree from the University of Toronto (OISE), his thesis focused on crafting public persona in educational leadership. He is an arts professional trained in classical theatre, children’s performance, and voice with a career as an actor, director, and owner of theatre companies in both Ontario and Alberta. Also, Andrew was a school teacher, arts consultant and school principal. In addition to published work on teaching and learning and the arts in education, Andrew has conducted research with members of Brock’s Social Justice Research Institute.

This year, Andrew teaches STAC 3V91 Sports in Arts and Culture and the DART courses 1P95 Creative Play for Education, 2P21 Drama in Education II at Brock. ctye@brocku.ca
(2022)

Fan Wu is a lonely nomad beholden, after all these years, to desire. Born in Baoding, China, now based in Toronto and Kingston, ON, he is a sound poet who collaborates with Toronto musicians Prince Nifty, Vibrant Matter, and other sound artists. His practice moves between activating language’s capacities and exploring language’s beyond. His writing orbits around questions of poetics, publics, and the impossibilities of communication. In collaboration with various galleries in Toronto, he has hosted workshops on themes of grief & mourning (Art Metropole), experimental writing on the moving image (Trinity Square Video), and the intersections of desire and politics (Mercer Union, in collaboration with Yaniya Lee). You can find his writing online at MICE Magazine, Aisle 4, Baest Journal, and Koffler Digital. Fan is the cofounder of the Toronto Experimental Translation Collective.

Fan is completing a PhD, Screen Cultures & Curatorial Studies, at Queen’s University (2021 – Present).  He has a M.A., Cinema Studies, University of Toronto (2017), M.A., Comparative Literature, University of Toronto (2015), and a Hon. B.A., Comparative Literature & Philosophy, University of Toronto (2014).

He is teaching STAC 1P99 The Culture of Noise.  fwu@brocku.ca
(2022)