ARTH 635 Art and Art History in Canada and Quebec: Unsettling Canadian Art History

• Mondays, 2:45-5:45 pm
• Instructor: Dr. Julia Skelly

Drawing on the critical scholarship of Erin Morton, Charmaine Nelson, Kristina Huneault, Sherry Farrell Racette, Lynda Jessup, Ruth B. Phillips and many others, this course will engage in what has been called “unsettling Canadian art history,” a phrase that points to the fact that Canada is a settler-colonial nation state, while also gesturing towards the importance of making (white) settler viewers, scholars and citizens “unsettled” through art and scholarship. We will read a number of methodological texts modelling how we might as scholars engage in critically Canadian art history, as well as readings about specific artworks and artists, starting (briefly) with the canonical (the Group of Seven), but focusing primarily on Indigenous artists, Black artists and Asian artists living and working on Turtle Island (the territory now known as Canada). The readings will cover both historical and contemporary art, and final papers can focus on any time period, as long as you aim to contribute to the project of unsettling Canadian art and art history.