THE PARASITIC

A One-Day Graduate Conference at McGill University - April 26, 2012 - Montreal, QC

Open to the public

Conference Poster click here

“The Parasitic” is the third annual, one-day interdisciplinary graduate student conference organized by the Art History and Communication Studies Graduate Student Association. This conference seeks to enhance collegial and scholarly exchange by bringing together a diverse range of graduate students, professors, and academics from within the McGill and Montreal communities, as well as from across Canada and North America.

This year’s symposium will explore the parasitic as object of cultural fascination, metaphor, and methodology in both contemporary and historical contexts. We seek to expand common conceptions of the parasite both to acknowledge its negative connotations and to explore its positive, productive, or innovative potential. As an organism, the parasite itself has enjoyed an illustrious history as the subject of cinema and visual culture, comics and literature, science and medicine. In addition to these histories, the Parasitic as concept may prove useful for opening new discussion across the humanities, interrupting and rerouting established channels of critical thought.

The 2012 keynote lecture will be presented by Dr. Margot Francis, “Befriending the Parasite: Love and Anger in Queer & Indigenous Performance”

Rather than attempting to rehabilitate the ‘parasitic’ as a productive metaphor for creative and systemic change, this presentation takes as its starting point the contention that in the west, we are all, already, deeply enmeshed in parasitic relations. I argue that in settler colonial states, most citizens are positioned as both host and parasite – by systems that feed off our energy, at the same time as we attempt to unsettle them. How then to proceed? Drawing on material from my book, Creative Subversions: Whiteness, Indigeneity, and the National Imaginary (UBC Press, 2011) I develop an analysis of these relations through highlighting the creative and theoretical contributions of artists who comment on the public secrets of Canadianness, while also exploring Walter Benjamin’s reflection that the “truth is not a matter of exposure which destroys the secret, but a revelation which does justice to it.” (Quoted in Taussig, 1999, 2)

Margot Francis is an associate professor of sociology and women’s studies at Brock University. Her recent book, Creative Subversions (2011) explores how whiteness and Indigeneity are articulated through iconic images of Canadian identity and the contradictory and contested meanings they evoke. These benign, even kitschy images, she argues, are haunted by ideas about race, masculinity, and sexuality that circulated during the formative years of Anglo-Canadian nationhood. Juxtaposing historical images with material by contemporary artists, Francis shows how artists are imbuing taken-for-granted symbols with new and suggestive meanings.

Please join us on Friday, April 27, 2012 for the Art History and Communication Studies Faculty Symposium, a special session featuring members of the AHCS faculty, organized by Dr. Amelia Jones.

Printable Schedule click here

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

5.00 – 7.00: Registration and Meet & Greet at Thompson House (3650 McTavish Street)

Thursday, April 26, 2012

9.00 – 9.20: Coffee (ARTS W 220)

9.20 – 9.30: Welcome & Opening Remarks (ARTS W 215)
Natalie Bussey, PhD Art History, McGill University

9.30 – 10.50: SESSION ONE – Parasitic Strategies in Contemporary Art and Its Institutions (ARTS W 215)

Moderator: Reilley Bishop-Stall, PhD Art History, McGill University

“Homebodies and Housewives: Considering the Advent of Feminist Installation Art”
Abi Shapiro, PhD Art History, McGill University

Untitled Paper on BLK Art Group
Julia Abraham, MA Visual Studies (Curatorial), University of Toronto

“Hans Haacke’s Textual Parasitism”
John A. Tyson, PhD Art History, Emory University

10.50 – 11.10: BREAK (ARTS W 220)

11.10 – 12.30: SESSION TWO – Political Parasitism (ARTS W 215)

Moderator: Lotfi Gouigah, MA Communication Studies, McGill University

“Swarms of Electronic Devices: Between Parasitic and Control Apparatus”
François Leblanc, MA Architecture, McGill University

“The Army and The People Are Not One Hand: Neoliberal Hegemony and the Armed Forces in the Arab Spring”
Ben Lorber, Independent Scholar

“Decolonizing Benjamin’s Aura: Umrao Singh Sher-Gil’s Family Photographs”
Natasha Bissonauth, History of Art and Visual Studies, Cornell University

12.30 – 1.30: LUNCH (ARTS W 220)

1.30 – 3.20: SESSION THREE – Medical Histories and Bodily Parasites: from the Nineteenth Century to the Present (ARTS W 215)

Moderator: Sara Kowalski, PhD Art History, McGill University

“Taking Care of a Nation: Charles Maurin’s Vision of Institutionalized Regeneration”
Sylvie Boisjoli, MA Art History, McGill University

“Parasitic Networks, the Victorians, and Novel Theory”
Jeanette Samyn, PhD English, Indiana University

“All That Remains: Discarded Hair as Corporeal Archive in Mona Hatoum's Recollection”
Daniella Sanader, MA Art History, McGill University

"Illness as Metaphor in the Art of Rosana Paulino and Wangechi Mutu"
Kanitra Fletcher, PhD History of Art and Visual Studies, Cornell University

3.20 – 3.40: BREAK (ARTS W 220)

3.40 – 5.00: SESSION FOUR – Para-Siting the Text: Imitation, Inversion and Adaptation in Semiotic Spaces (ARTS W 215)

Moderator: Natalie Bussey, PhD Art History, McGill University

“Modernism’s Worm: Parasitic Speech and Critique in Peter Eisenman’s Houses”
Aaron Tacinelli, PhD History of Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh

“Parasite or Paratext? : Strategies of Adaptation and Appropriation in Parasite Eve”
Ryan Cadrette, MA Media Studies, Concordia University

“Parasites in Parallel: Troubling Boundaries between Cities and Festivals”
Amy Macdonald, MA Communication Studies, McGill University

5.00 – 5.30: BREAK (ARTS W 220)

5.30 – 7.00: KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Dr. Margot Francis, “Befriending the Parasite: Love and Anger in Queer & Indigenous Performance” (ARTS W 215)

Closing remarks

Sara Kowalski, PhD Art History, McGill University

7.00 – 9.00: RECEPTION (ARTS 160)

Friday, April 27, 2012
1.00 – 5.00: 3rd Annual AHCS Faculty Symposium (ARTS W 215)

Special session featuring members of McGill’s Department of Art History and Communication Studies Faculty, organized by Dr. Amelia Jones.

1.00: Dr. Matthew Hunter
Joshua Reynolds's “Nice Chymistry”

2.00: Dr. Jonathan Sterne
Who Tunes Whom?: Auto-Tune, Oil Exploration and the Politics of Frequency

3.00: Dr. Cecily Hilsdale
Hierarchies and the Biographies of Culture

4.00: Dr. Gabriella Coleman
Profiling Anonymous

AHCS Conference Organizing Committee:

Reilley Bishop-Stall (Art History)
Sylvie Boisjoli (Art History)
Natalie Bussey (Art History)
Lotfi Gouigah (Communication Studies)
Sara Kowalski (Art History)

Acknowledgements:

The AHCS Conference Committee would like to acknowledge the assistance of the following individuals:
Maureen Coote
Matthew Dupuis
Theodora Tsentas
Dr. Margot Francis
Dr. Will Straw
Hannah McElgunn
Caroline Bem
Riaz Mehmood (Website)
Kendall Green (Poster)

Generously funded by