Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Culture

03/19/2025

https://carleton.ca/fass/cu-story/thinking-through-the-museum/

By Emily Putnam Confronting difficult histories in museums requires more than just presenting facts—it demands collaboration, innovation, and inclusivity. While the development of “new museology” approaches have reframed visitors as active participants in meaning-making rather than passive con...

01/29/2025

Faculty and former students and those who worked with Mark are invited to a memorial gathering for Mark Salber Phillips (1946-2024), who was an esteemed member of Carleton’s History Department and Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Culture. The event will take place at the Carleton Dominion-Chalmers Centre on Saturday, February 8, 1:00-4:00 pm. See attached poster.

01/06/2025

EDIT: All systems appear to have returned to normal. If you are still encountering problems with connecting, please contact the ITS Service desk: https://carleton.ca/its/contact/

09/24/2024

Curatorial Studies and Art and Architectural History student, Emily Critch has recently curated three recent exhibitions in New Brunswick and Newfoundland & Labrador. Union House Arts notes that Emily is an award winning Mi'kmaw and settler curator, writer and artist from Elmastukwek, Ktaqmkuj Territory.

Jerry Evans solo exhibition Mimajuaqne’kati | Place of Life installed at the Owens Art Gallery in Sackville NB is up until September 15: Mimajuaqne’kati | Place of Life is a solo exhibition presenting prints and video by Mi’kmaw and settlervisual artist Jerry Evans. Incorporating elements of L’nu visual culture and archival photographs ofancestors, Evans’ work considers the inter-territorial relationships between the Beothuk and the Mi’kmaqin Ktaqmkuk. It also explores themes related to social amnesia, interruption, and the survivance ofIndigenous life and histories in what is colonially known as Newfoundland and Labrador. The exhibitionhonours life cycles and relations in Ktaqmkuk, and more broadly within Mi’kma’ki, Wabanaki Territory,and beyond.

etched by wind and water: print media of Newfoundland and Labrador installed at Union House Arts is up until September 21: etched by wind and water is an exhibition that presents a survey of 20 artists who are from and havecalled Newfoundland and Labrador home. This constellation of prints from the St. Michael’s Printshoparchive highlights diverse print media techniques and creative practices that thematically reflect on land,water, home, relationship to place, and imagination. This exhibition poetically and conceptually connectsthe process of etching images to a plate or stone, the relationship between the wind and water shaping thelives of the artists, and the ways the water shapes the rocky terrain of this place we call home.

eltu’n klaman mukwite’ten | making to remember installed at the Demasduit Regional Museum (The Rooms) is up until October 6: Highlighting works from The Rooms Collections, this exhibition celebrates Mi’kmaw artists andcraftspeople from, and connected to, the central region of Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland). They are sharedalongside pendants made by Beothuk ancestors and drawings by Shanawdithit. Ranging from practiceslike boat building, carving, drawing, weaving, textiles, and printmaking, the artists in this exhibition buildupon a continuum of artistic and cultural knowledge. Their approaches are rooted in the past sharedterritory of the Mi’kmaq and Beothuk, ensuring the preservation of these histories for future generations.

Send a message to learn more

09/24/2024

Please find the Ruth and Mark Philips Professorship (RMPP) fall Film and Book Club schedules. All will take place on Wednesdays at 2:30 pm in the ICSLAC seminar room 201D St. Patrick’s Building

09/24/2024

The first Ruth and Mark Philips Professorship (RMPP) event of the 2024-25 academic year will be on Wednesday, September 25th at 5:30 pm in the ICSLAC seminar room 201D St. Pat’s. Local author Sara Power will deliver a reading from her debut short fiction collection, Art of Camouflage.

09/05/2024

Welcome and welcome back to campus everyone. We had orientation for our incoming PhD in Cultural Mediations students this morning and will have one for the Graduate Diploma in Curatorial Studies later this month. We are back! As I hear of events, I'll be sharing them here as well as on our ICSLAC website. I hope to see you soon!

Even our groundhog friends have been resting up for a busy September!

06/24/2024

CHARACTERS: A (mostly) One-Person Show by Jesse Stewart
June 27-29, 2024
7:30 Thursday-Saturday
Join award-winning interdisciplinary artist Jesse Stewart for a one-person show that weaves together storytelling and music to celebrate individuals who have left an indelible mark on the playwright’s life. With a blend of humour, emotion, and introspection, each character comes to life through engaging anecdotes and musical interludes performed on a variety of unusual musical instruments. From an enigmatic factory worker with a teardrop tattoo, to a US-marine-turned-Buddhist-priest-and-sculptor, Characters delves deep into the profound impact that diverse personalities can have on our own lives and stories.
Suitable for all ages.
Run time approximately 2h https://www.thegladstone.ca/characters/

04/17/2024

Please join us for a vernissage on Monday, 22 April 2024, 1:00pm for opening remarks and light refreshments in MacOdrum Library, Room 252 to celebrate the opening of Weaving Together: The Art of Shirley Bear curated by the 2024 cohort of the Curatorial Studies 5002 seminar.

Weaving Together: The Art of Shirley Bear

Curatorial Studies seminar students invite all to visit the exhibition, Weaving Together: The Art of Shirley Bear, presented on the main floor of MacOdrum Library (the large wall nearest the big windows, to the left of the main doors) from April 22 to May 30, 2024.
This exhibition features a selection of works by Shirley Bear (1936-2022), Wolastoqiyik artist, poet, curator, herbalist, and respected Elder from Neqotkuk (Tobique First Nation) in Wabanaki territory, also known as New Brunswick. Through nine of Bear’s works and two pieces of her poetry, Weaving Together considers basketry as a metaphor for relationality. Just as splints of ash are woven together to form a basket, Bear reveals Wabanaki life as a constellation of entwined relationships between people, community, and land across generations. In this way, her work encourages a different — and more malleable — understanding of time. The works are selected from the Carleton University Art Gallery collection and are being exhibited for the first time since their donation to the gallery in 1995.

Weaving Together: The Art of Shirley Bear is curated by Victoria Hawco, Hanako Hubbard-Radulovich, Maya Maayergi, Dana Martin-Wylie, Melanie Nunez, Sevane Paroyan and Peter Salmon, graduate students enrolled in a winter 2024 Curatorial Studies seminar taught by Alexandra Kahsenni:io Nahwegahbow, in partnership with Carleton University Art Gallery.
The curators respectfully acknowledge our location on the traditional, unceded territories of the Algonquin Nation, and wish to thank the staff at Carleton University Art Gallery and the Indigenous Art Centre (Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada), and Emma Hassencahl-Perley for their help, support and sound advice in the development of this exhibition.

Image:
Shirley Bear (1936-2022)
Wolastoqiyik, Neqotkuk (Tobique First Nation)
Basket Weaver (1988)
Woodcut on paper, edition 5/7
Collection of Carleton University Art Gallery: Gift of Lesley Sinclair, 1995
Photo by Patrick Lacasse

04/15/2024

Due to a scheduling conflict, the time for the Chris Faulkner lecture has been moved back an hour, to 5:00 - 7:00 pm, Thursday April 18th, 2024. ⏰

04/04/2024

Please join us on Thursday, April 11, 2024 from 5:30 pm to 7:00 pm EST to celebrate the release of Sarah Phillips Casteel’s new book, Black Lives Under Na**sm: Making History Visible in Literature and Art. Phillips Casteel will be in conversation with Aboubakar Sanogo and the conversation will be moderated by Ming Tiampo.

The event will take place at the National Gallery of Canada Lecture Hall. Free event, no registration required.

The book can be purchased in the NGC Boutique and is available online at ShopNGC.ca. The author will be available to sign copies following the event.

In English, with simultaneous French-language translation.

For full details: https://carleton.ca/ctca/cu-events/sarah-phillips-casteel-black-lives-under-nazism-making-history-visible-in-literature-and-art/

This event is organized by the Centre for Transnational Cultural Analysis in partnership with the National Gallery of Canada. The CTCA gratefully acknowledges the support of the Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Art, and Culture, and the Department of English Literature and Language at Carleton University.

03/08/2024

The 2024 Scaffold Issue Theme is here! The Power of Horror Compels You: Exploring Historic and Modern Iterations of Horror.

We are seeking articles of 5000-7000 words for publication in the next issue of Scaffold: the Journal for the Institute of Comparative Studies of Literature, Art, and Culture ( ), an open-access graduate student journal. Articles will be double-blind, peer-reviewed, and published digitally through OJS.

Please email proposals of approximately 300-500 words to [email protected], including a brief author bio, by April 29th 2024.

Accepted authors will be informed by early May, with full articles due for review by August 5th 2024. For more info, go to https://ojs.library.carleton.ca/index.php/J-ICSLAC/index