Cultural Studies micro-courses devote 12 hours to exploring a particular method, moment, or phenomenon and are designed to help students extend theory to current issues, build scholarship, connect research with practice, and gather new tools. The courses are delivered in a condensed format and will be counted as a 1.0 unit course. Micro-courses are graded as pass/fail. For full time graduate students, there is no additional cost to take any of these courses.
CUST 817-001 Signs of the Times
Visualizing Future Foodways: Creative Interventions and Food Policy
Wednesdays July 6-August 10, 6-8pm Online.
The urgent problems we face connected to global food systems—from hunger and food insecurity to greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation—demand creative and innovative solutions. How can the arts respond? This micro-course will present creative work at the intersection of art and food, reexamined through the lens of contemporary pressing issues around food and agriculture. Together we will consider the potential ways in which artistic and curatorial practices might engage meaningfully with issues of food security, sovereignty and justice, and how it might impact policy. We invite scientists, artists, cultural studies scholars, food researchers and any other interested participants to join in this interdisciplinary conversation. Through a series of discussions and creative presentations, we will explore the nexus of food, art, and policy. Together we will collectively imagine how research-creation can impact the imperative changes we need to make to feed the world while tackling the climate emergency.
Course Instructors
Zoë Heyn-Jones is a settler researcher-artist and cultural worker who grew up on Saugeen Ojibway land in Ontario, Canada and on Tz’utujil/Kaqchikel Maya land in Guatemala. Zoë holds a PhD in Visual Arts from York University and a graduate diploma in Latin American Studies from CERLAC (the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean, York University). Zoë is currently a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Sustainable Curating in the department of Visual Arts at Western University where she is developing an interdisciplinary arts-based project on food security, sovereignty and justice in Canada and Mexico. She lives and works in Tenochtitlan/Mexico City and Tkaronto/Toronto. Zoeheynjones.com.
Amanda White is a scholar, artist, mother and white settler of Scottish and Irish descent living and working on the traditional territories of the Mississaugas of the Credit, Anishinaabe, Huron-Wendat and Haudenosaunee peoples in Toronto. Amanda holds a PhD from Queen’s University and MFA from the University of Windsor. Amanda is currently a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Sustainable Curating in the Department of Visual Art at Western University where her research-creation project examines the symbiotic relationships between humans and the plants that we eat. Current works-in-progress include several collaborative and solo studio-based projects, a forthcoming co-edited book and a graphic novel. amandawhite.com
CUST 817-002 Signs of the Times
The Future of Fashion? Slow Fashion and the Fibreshed Movement
Today’s global fashion industry is one of the most environmentally destructive in the world. Recent studies suggest it accounts for 10% of carbon emissions, 20% of wastewater generation and, as a global polluter, it ranks second only to the petroleum industry. At the same time, the human cost of fashion has made headlines around the world. From the collapse of Rana Plaza in Savar, Bangladesh in 2013 to the mass dismissal of garment workers during the Coronavirus pandemic, the toll of the industry on workers’ bodies and lives is becoming harder to ignore. In some corners this has prompted a rethink, and a consideration of how companies and individuals might participate in a more ethical and sustainable fashion industry. For many, this has meant a return to and reinvigoration of historical tools and techniques. This micro-course explores some of these alternatives through a focus on slow fashion, with a particular emphasis on how the local fibreshed movement—a movement that advocates for clothing grown and sewn in the same geographic region in which one lives—has drawn upon historical settler practices of cloth production. Working in collaboration with instructors from the Kingston Handloom Weavers & Spinners (KHWS), participants will learn about the history and conceptual foundation of slow fashion and gain an understanding of how makers adhere to the ideals of the fibreshed movement through a series of hands-on lessons in spinning, natural dyeing, and weaving.
Course Instructors
Johanna Amos, PhD is an Academic Skills & Writing Specialist and assistant professor (adjunct) in the Department of Art History & Art Conservation at Queen’s University. Her research focuses on the material and visual culture of nineteenth-century imperial Britain, with a particular emphasis on women producers, textile labour, and acts of self-fashioning. She is co-editor (with Lisa Binkley) of
Stitching the Self: Identity and the Needle Arts (Bloomsbury Visual Arts), and a founding member of Open Art Histories, a working group committed to developing and sharing pedagogical strategies for inclusive art histories. Johanna is also an active member of
Kingston Handloom Weavers & Spinners (KHWS), and was a team lead for
Threads of History, the Guild’s digital history project.
Beth Fisher and her family own
Stone Spindle Farm in Tamworth, Ontario where they raise suri and huacaya alpacas and grow natural dye plants. In the past, she has raised Columbia and Polypay sheep and mohair goats. Beth is a graduate of the Spinning Certificate Course at Haliburton School of the Arts and the Alpaca Shed Sorters Course at Olds College (Alberta). Stone Spindle Farm is a Producer Member of
Upper Canada Fibreshed and focuses on eco- friendly practices when making farming decisions. Beth produces yarns, garments, and many other alpaca fibre products.
Elaine Horemans is a graduate of the University of Guelph with a BSc in Biology (Genetics). She worked in the horticulture industry and ran a market garden for several years before teaching herself to spin in 1985. Elaine joined the Kingston Handloom Weavers & Spinners in 2008 and learned to weave in 2012. She has raised Romney/ Bluefaced Leicester cross sheep since 2010 and sells raw fleece, roving, yarns, and knitted and woven gift items. In 2016 and 2017, she was the registrar for the Ontario Handspinning Seminar (OHS) and, in 2020, she became an honours graduate of the nationally-acclaimed, six-year OHS Spinning Certificate program. Currently, she is working on an independent study project on using woad as a dyestuff as part of the Master Spinner certificate.
