The Public Humanities @ Western program is designed to enhance the Faculty of Arts and Humanities’ commitment to the promotion of innovative forms of publicly engaged knowledge creation, experiential learning, and campus-community collaboration. Bringing together faculty, students, staff, and public partners, the program aims to address common problems as well as opportunities that arise between the campus and community. It also seeks to foster a more recognized place for public scholarship as an important mode of academic inquiry, and to encourage young scholars across the disciplines to pursue research projects aimed towards broader publics and forms of engagement. Above all, the program is designed to cultivate a renewed spirit of citizenship and engagement through arts and humanities research and collaboration.
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recent Events:
Creativity and Change: A Public Lecture by Banff Centre President Jeff Melanson
Thursday, March 28, 2013
Museum London at 7 p.m.
Free admission, everyone welcome!
This lecture marks the first collaboration in a new partnership between Museum London,The School for Advanced Studies in Arts and Humanities and Public Humanities @ Western.
As rapid changes in our social, cultural and economic fabric have created uncertain times, Jeff Melanson will discuss opportunities for transformative change, and how individuals and organizations can engage the public, reframe audience development and create greater public good.
Melanson was appointed president of The Banff Centre in 2012. He holds a BA in music from the University of Manitoba and a MBA degree from Wilfrid Laurier University. A member of the Young Presidents’ Organization and a trustee with the National Guild for Community Arts Education, in the United States, Melanson was the first arts leader to be appointed one of Canada’s Top 40 Under 40™ for 2009.
Between 2000 and 2006, Melanson held various posts at the Community School at the Royal Conservatory of Music and was promoted to dean in 2001. In this role, he was essential in building the program into the largest community arts school in North America. In 2006, Melanson was appointed executive director and co-chief executive officer of Canada’s National Ballet School. During his tenure, he was instrumental in eliminating a significant annual operating deficit, increasing annual revenues by over 50 per cent, overseeing the completion of residence renovations, and creating new strategic partnerships with many non-profit and for-profit arts and entertainment corporations.
"Museum Utopias, Museum Dystopias:New National Museum Agendas and the Dawning of the Age of Hybridity"
Thursday, March 14, 2013
UCC56 at 4:30 p.m.
Dr. Ruth B. Phillips is the Canada Research Chair in Modern Culture at Carlton University. She researches visual and material culture as aspects of larger processes of culture contact and colonization in order to contribute to the development of new approaches to museological and academic representations of First Nations art.
Dr. Phillips has created the Visual Studies Laboratory in Carleton’s Institute of Comparative Studies in Literature, Art, and Culture (ICSLAC), funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Ontario Innovation Fund, and Carleton University. The Laboratory hosts the work of the Great Lakes Research Alliance for the Study of Aboriginal Arts and Cultures (GRASAC), which Phillips founded in 2005.
GRASAC is an international collaboration of over fifty researchers based in universities, museums, and indigenous communities. Its members are developing new understandings of Great Lakes systems of expressive culture that incorporate both Western and indigenous knowledge and perspectives. In 2008, GRASAC launched its innovative multi-disciplinary database, using software developed with its industry partner, Ideeclic, of Gatineau, Quebec. The database supports the work of GRASAC researchers and ICSLAC students and facilitates digital repatriation to indigenous communities.
"The Compounded Eye: Beauty and the Body; its Beholders and Beholdings"
Thursday, March 7, 2013
North Campus Bldg. Room 117 at 7:30 p.m.
Dr. Robert Enright is University Research Professor in Art Criticism, is one of Canada's most prominent cultural journalists. He was the founder and is currently the Senior Contributing Editor to Border Crossings magazine.
Dr. Enright has received 14 nominations at the National and Western Magazine Awards for his writing in Border Crossings, winning four gold and two silver medals. He was an art critic for CBC radio and television for 25 years and continues to contribute to a number of network programs. He also contributes regularly to the Globe & Mail, and to a number of international art magazines, including ArtReview, Modern Painters, ARTnews and Contemporary. Prof. Enright collaborated with Arthur Danto on the book, Eric Fischl: 19702000, and published a collection of 32 interviews under the title Peregrinations: Conversations with Contemporary Artists. He has also contributed essays, introductions and interviews to 20 catalogues in Canada, the U.S. and Europe. In addition to writing about the visual arts, he has conducted interviews and reviewed works in theatre, dance, film and performance art. In 2005 Professor Enright was made a Member of the Order of Canada by Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson.
"Propositions for Thought in the Act"
Monday, March 4, 2013
Conron Hall at 5:30 p.m.
Erin Manning is a cultural theorist, political philosopher, and practicing visual artist. She currently holds a University Research Chair in the Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia University and is the founder and director of SenseLab, a laboratory that explores the intersections between art practice and philosophy through the matrix of the sensing body in movement. In her writing, Manning addresses various topics related to thought and politics in a field between dance and new technology, the convergence of cinema, animation, and new media. Her focus is on the senses, philosophy, and politics, as well as on the political and micropolitics of sensation and performance art. Her publications include: Relationscapes: Movement, Art, Philosophy (2009), Politics of Touch: Sense, Movement, Sovereignty(2007), and Ephemeral Territories: Representing Nation, Home, and Identity in Canada (2003).
Brian Massumi is a political theorist, writer, and philosopher. He teaches in the Communication Sciences Department at the Université de Montréal and is well known for his English translation of several major texts in French post-structural theory including Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus and Jean-François Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition. In addition, Massumi’s research is two-fold: the experience of movement and the interrelations between the senses, particularly in the context if new media art and technology; and the emergent moves of power associated with the globalization of capitalism and the rise of preemptive politics. His authored books include Semblance and Event: Activist Philosophy and the Occurrent Arts (2011) and Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (2002). Massumi is also the editor of A Shock to Thought: Expression After Deleuze and Guattari (2002) and The Matrixial Borderspace: Essays by Bracha Ettinger (1997).
creativity & change recording
The Public Humanities at Western is very pleased to announce that we have uploaded the recording for the Roundtable Dialogue with Jeff Melanson. “Creativity and Change” inaugurates a partnership between the School for Advanced Studies in the Arts and Humanities (SASAH), the Public Humanities at Western, and Museum London.
Rapid changes in our social, cultural and economic fabric make for uncertain times that often call for efficiency and austerity in postsecondary education. At a time when technology, science, and economics are often cited as vital responses to this uncertainty, this event boldly re-asserts Western’s mission to harness the rich potential of the arts and humanities as these fields’ essential partners. While other universities are reducing the liberal arts, Western and the Faculty of Arts and Humanities only see opportunity.
Partnership between Western and its communities is key to seizing this opportunity, starting at home. A joint effort between the School, the Public Humanities at Western, and Museum London, this event marks the beginning of a renewed dialogue about our common challenges and opportunities for future collaboration.
renewing western's strategic plan:
The Public Humanities at Western is pleased to offer our open letter to the Senate Committee on University Planning (SCUP) regarding the strategic plan renewal process at Western University.
Public humanities In the News...
Alumnus brings a little 'humour' to the novel
It’s not your typical tale of time travel. Ill Humour, a recent novel by Western alumnus Philip Glennie, PhD’11, has what he calls an “eye-catching premise.” And he’s right.. Read More
What roles do community engagement and public scholarship play at Western as it renews its Strategic Plan? During a time of change and crisis in higher education, what does it mean for an international research university to reimagine its civic commitment, and to explore new spaces of engagement at the student, faculty and institutional levels? How do we cultivate a student experience that fosters global thinking, while also promoting programs and partnerships that feature community-based learning and research that are mutually beneficial to Western and its publics? Read More
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