Date Posted: July 6, 2026
Teaching Assistantship Vacancies – Department of Art History, Art Conservation
and Fine Art (Visual Arts) 2026-2027
The Department of Art History, Art Conservation and Fine Art (Visual Arts) has Teaching Assistantships available in the following courses for 2026-2027 academic year. TAships are filled according to Group Preferences set out in the Collective Agreement between Queen’s University and the Public Service Alliance of Canada
Applications are due no later than Thursday, July 27, 2026.
Responsibilities
The teaching assistant duties include but are not limited to grading assignments, attending lectures and tutorials in person, office hours with students, and answering emails. More specific expectations will be covered at the beginning of the term.
FALL TERM
ARTH 121: Global Art Histories: Parallels & Contacts
Fall Term ON CAMPUS
An introduction to the study of art, architecture, and material culture from a global perspective, including Asia, Europe, Latin America, and Africa. Organized around themes, parallels and connections will be drawn between artistic objects and buildings from across history and around the world. Case studies consider art and architecture’s relationship to religion, monarchy, colonialism, indigeneity, missionization, cultural appropriation, commodification, and self-representation. Others will consider medium, technique, perspective, composition, and art’s relationship to narrative and meditation.
ARTH 203: Art and Popular Culture
Fall Term ON CAMPUS
What does The Matrix Trilogy have to do with critical theory? What does Harry Potter tell us about our fascination with the Middle Ages? What is “camp” and what does it have to do with queer culture and representation? As art is freed from the confines of the gallery where it is conventionally located in Western art history, it potentially becomes a “popular”, even democratizing medium accessible to anyone with access to television, radio, urban space, and the internet.
ARTH 214: Antiquity and Nature in Renaissance Art, 1300-1500
Fall Term ON CAMPUS
This course explores innovations in art and architecture during the first 200 years of the Renaissance, primarily in Italy but also in Northern Europe. The intellectual and cultural movement of the Renaissance provides the setting, and many examples of painting, sculpture and architecture take centre stage. We will investigate how artists revived ancient ideals and turned to nature for inspiration. We will also consider the impact of international travel and trade on artistic representations. The journey begins in about 1300, when Dante’s poetic visions of heaven and hell found responses in wall paintings and sculptures and ends in about 1500 with the extraordinary achievements in art, science and medicine of Leonardo da Vinci.
ARTH 226: Modern Arts in a Globalizing World
Fall Term ON CAMPUS
This course examines the histories, meanings, and sites of modern arts in a globalizing world. Students become familiar with key art works, transnational and global networks of art, shifts in critical conceptions, and art historical problems surrounding modernity, modernisms, and modern arts.
ARTH 273: Early Islamic Art
Fall Term ON CAMPUS
This course will examine the beauty, logic, and power of Islamic art in a variety of media from the emergence of Muhammad through the fifteenth century.
ARTH 274: Architecture and Empire
Fall Term ON CAMPUS
Offers a critical assessment of the relationship between imperialism and architecture with a focus on the European empires in Asia, Africa, and Latin America from the 15th to 20th centuries. Using case studies organized chronologically and by empire, this course will look at the architecture of European colonies not just from the viewpoint of the colonizer but also from that of the colonized. It will consider how architecture functions as an image of power and nostalgia for the colonizers but how strategies used by colonized people preserved their own architectural traditions and iconography in the architecture and subverted imperial goals.
ARTH 296: Making the Modern Landscape
Fall Term ON CAMPUS
Today we are experiencing a reassessment of the modern, western landscape and the ideals of progress that underlie it. This course will examine landscape design in the 20th and 21st centuries, including western and non-western approaches, looking at public spaces, places of leisure, suburban yards, and more.
ARTV 101: Introduction to Visual Studies
Fall Term ON CAMPUS
What does ancient Roman graffiti, Medieval stained glass, and Tik Tok have in common? How are we influenced by the images, screens, and media that we encounter daily, be it in advertising, news media, television, movies, video games, and social media? Delve into the dynamic realm of visual culture, exploring its role in shaping society, politics, and personal identity; and explore theories and ideas to interpret and analyze what we see and experience as visual culture.
ARTV 201: Foundations in 2D Media
Fall Term ON CAMPUS
This course explores a range of foundational techniques in 2D media. Students will experiment with historical and contemporary methods, examining the interplay between form, technique, and concepts. The skills, materials, and vocabulary that students will learn a variety of 2D media (e.g., painting, drawing, photography).
ARTV 203: Digital Photography and Intermedia
Fall Term ON CAMPUS
This course explores a range of foundational techniques in intermedia. Students will experiment with historical and contemporary methods from diverse cultural contexts, examining the interplay between form, technique, and concepts. The skills and vocabulary that students will learn may relate to digital photography, scanning, editing, digital painting, sound, video, and performance, among other processes and media.
WINTER TERM
ARTH 122: Curating Art Worlds
Winter Term ON CAMPUS
This course introduces students to key "art world" institutions, such as museums, artist-run centres, biennales, and auction houses, by examining their histories, current practices, and future challenges. Using a case study approach, the course provides students with introductory professional skills, concepts, and ideas to think and work in a diversity of arts careers while gaining transferable skills.
ARTH 210: Introduction to Technical Art History
Winter Term ON CAMPUS
Looking into a painting’s genesis: Technical Art History looks closely at the materials and techniques used to create art -- from Early Italian panel paintings to Piet Mondrian's abstract canvases -- and better understand when, how, why and by whom these works were created.
ARTH 212: Arts of the Middle Ages
Winter Term ON CAMPUS
We explore the pivotal period of European, North African, and Middle Eastern art history between c. 300-1400. This period not only brought forth our dominant systems of faith and their related artistic traditions (the mosques of Islam, the churches and chapels of Christianity), but also many of our institutions (monarchy, the earliest universities), and gave shape to many of our cities (Paris, London, Rome, Istanbul, etc). This course reframes the period through careful contextual analyses of major monuments and argues for the importance of the medieval world for shaping world art.
ARTH 220: Socially Engaged Art
Winter Term ON CAMPUS
An introduction to socially engaged art around the world. Using a case study approach, the course will consider the role of art and artists within social movements and study the practices of individual artists or collectives who use their work as a tool for social change.
ARTH 234: Introduction to African Arts
Winter Term ON CAMPUS
The course aims to present an introduction to the arts and visual culture of African peoples, encompassing traditional or classical African arts, as well as modern and contemporary African arts. It seeks to explore not only how the concept of African art is not unanimous and has shifted over time, but also how objects related to specific African communities have circulated and acquired new meanings outside the continent. Through theoretical and practical analysis, students will be encouraged to reflect on how the field of African art has been shaped by scholars, curators, artists, and public interaction, as well as its main turning points.
ARTH 250: Art, Society and Culture
Fall Term ONLINE
This online course is an introduction to the social conditions and cultural movements that shaped nineteenth-century European visual arts in their global context. Two main themes will be stressed: 1) the tension between modernity and anti-modernism and 2) competing views on the very nature of the visual arts. The dramatic social and political developments of the period were reflected in diverse cultural movements, some of which embraced change while others rejected it and looked to the past for artistic models. Closely related to these cultural movements was the fundamental question of what comprised the visual arts. For example, increased exposure to non-Western visual culture challenged European assumptions about art.
ARTH 260: Culture and Conflict
Winter Term ON CAMPUS
An investigation of the impact of war on art and architecture, as well as human attempts to preserve cultural heritage. A chronological or thematic approach may be taken, with focus placed on one or more case studies, such as: the Sacks of Rome, the Napoleonic wars, Nazi looting, the Cultural Revolution in China, and Afghanistan under Taliban rule.
ARTH 292: Modern Architecture: Aesthetics, Capitalism, Industry
Winter Term ON CAMPUS
An examination of architecture as it has developed in relation to the economies, technologies, and social practices of the modern world. Our focus will include architectural aesthetics, materials, structures, technologies, and spaces.
ARTV 102: Meaning-making through Visual Art
Winter Term ON CAMPUS
An introduction to the production of meaning through art making across a range of visual media. Although different in their final forms, all works of art are the product of a series of decisions (material, formal, conceptual, cultural, political, relational) that create effects and meanings. These meanings are shaped by different perspectives and worldviews, and they shift over time or across different contexts. In this course, students will be introduced to a variety of artistic processes and use these to convey concepts gaining critical awareness of how their works engage various audiences.
ARTV 204: Foundations in Printmaking
Winter Term ON CAMPUS
This course introduces students to a range of foundational techniques in printmaking, emphasizing technical proficiency and conceptual development. Students will explore historical and contemporary approaches to printmaking from diverse cultural contexts (e.g., achromatic and color techniques across relief, intaglio, lithography, and/or silkscreen processes) and investigate the expressive potential of print while critically reflecting on the unique characteristics and social role of the medium, such as reproducibility and self-publishing.
Teaching Assistantships are filled according to Group Preferences set out in the Collective Agreement between Queen’s University and the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC 901 http://psac901.org/).
First Preference – Group A
Is for qualified graduate students registered as:
students in a department or program in which the TAship will be offered; or
students in an interdisciplinary program with TA budget resources, and for whom the TAship has been grantedas part of the funding commitment offered by the Employer.
Second Preference – Group B
Is for qualified graduate students registered as:
students in a department or program in which the TAship will be offered; or
students in an interdisciplinary program with TA budget resources, and who are in their first unfunded year oftheir graduate studies program.
Third Preference – Group C
Is for qualified graduate students registered as:
students in a department or program in which the TAship will be offered; or
students in an interdisciplinary program with TA budget resources, and for whom
the TAship will not form part of the funding commitment offered by the Employer; or
there is currently no funding commitment provide by the Employer.
Fourth Preference – Group D
Is for qualified graduate students that have previously held a TAship or TFship for the Employer.
Fifth Preference – Group E
Is for qualified graduate students that have did not meet the criteria as set out in 12.04 A, B, C, or D.
APPLICATION PROCESS
Applications are being accepted immediately and are due no later than Thursday, July 27, 2026.
Please ensure you indicate which applicant group you are in.
Group A and B Applicants
Please complete and submit the Application Form indicating course preferences.
Groups C, D and E Applicants
Please complete and submit the Application Form. In addition, upload a cover letter and curriculum vitae outlining academic accomplishments and relevant experience along with your unofficial transcript.
Please note that incomplete applications will not be considered.