Associate Professor, History of Art and Visual Culture
BA, University of Guelph
MA, York University
PhD, Binghamton University
905 688 5550 x3821
linda.steer@brocku.ca
Dr. Linda Steer is an Associate Professor, Department of Visual Arts at Brock University, and a member and former Director of the PhD Program in Interdisciplinary Humanities at Brock University. Professor Steer’s research focuses primarily on twentieth and twenty-first-century art and visual culture. In earlier projects, she examined the use and manipulation of photography by twentieth-century avant-gardes, including the Surrealists and the Beat Generation. She is the author of Appropriated Photographs in French Surrealist Periodicals, 1924-1939, Routledge Press, 2017. Read Charlene Heath’s review of Appropriated Photographs here. Steer’s current research looks at drug photography from the 1970s to the present through the lens of affect and empathy. She teaches first year art history as well as courses on the history of photography; appropriation in art and visual culture; the visual culture of apocalypse; and censorship and controversy in the arts.
Dr. Steer’s podcast for her course “Introduction to the History of Western Art” is available to the public. You can find “Unboxing the Canon” at https://unboxingthecanon.podbean.com/ and on all major podcast distributors.
“Entangled Empathy, Drug Use, and Photographs of Suffering.” International Journal of Drug Policy 65 (March 2019): 31-40.
“Catherine Heard: Imagining Phantoms.” Espace 115 (Winter 2017): 84-5.
Found and Borrowed Photographs in French Surrealist Periodicals, 1924-1939. Routledge, 2016.
“I AM THAT AM I?” Brion Gysin’s Art of Unsettled Identities,” Translocated Modernisms: Paris and Other Lost Generations, edited by Emily Ballantyne, Marta Dvorak, and Dean Irvine. University of Ottawa Press, 2016. (co-written with Gregory Betts)
“On Connecting,” Photography and Culture 7.1 (March 2014): 79-81.
“Ponytail in a Goodwill Bin: Canadian Artist Catherine Heard’s Work as Surreal.” Rampike, Fall 2013: 30-39.
Affecting Photographies. Special Issue of Photography and Culture 2.3 (Fall 2009). (co-edited with Thy Phu)”Surreal Encounters: Science, Surrealism and the Re-Circulation of a Crime-Scene Photograph.” History of Photography 32.2 (Summer 2008): 110-122.
“Photographic Appropriation, Ethnography and the Surrealist Other.” The Comparatist 32 (May 2008): 63-81.
“From Document to Memento: Atget, Surrealism and the Manipulation of Memory.” In Constructions of Death, Mourning and Memory. WAPACC Annual Conference Proceedings. Edited by Lilian H. Zirpolo. Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey: WAPACC, 2006. 48-51.
“Worlds of Birds and Snow.” In Sharon Switzer, Falling from Grace: Scenes 1 Through 6. Exhibition at the McMaster University Museum of Art, November 2006-January 2007. Hamilton: McMaster University, 2006. n.p.
Conference Papers
“Turn on the Lights and Show and Tell in a Second-Year Undergraduate Course.” Universities Art Association of Canada (UAAC) Annual Conference, Montreal, October 27-30, 2016.
“Transnational Histories of Photography in Canada.” Panel organized and chaired.
Universities Art Association of Canada (UAAC) Annual Conference, Montreal, October 27-30, 2016.
“Photography, Crisis, Empathy.” After Post-Photography 2. European University, St Petersburg, Russia, April 14-16, 2016.
“Conceptual Art Now.” Panel co-organized with Julia Polyck-O’Neill, PhD candidate at Brock University. Universities Art Association of Canada (UAAC) Conference, Halifax, November 5-7, 2015.
“The Future in Photography: Brion Gysin.” Two Days of Canada: Avant Canada. Brock University, November 5-7, 2014.
“Photography and Empathy.” Panel organized and chaired with Dr. Sarah Parsons, York University. Universities Art Association of Canada (UAAC) Conference, Toronto, October 23-26, 2014.
“A Decade of Experiments in Interdisciplinary Photo Research” (with Dr. Sarah Parsons, York University). Universities Art Association of Canada (UAAC) Annual Conference, Montreal, November 1-3, 2012.