Well, this has certainly not been a dull year! I don’t think any of us predicted that the 2019/20 academic year would end quite like this. Like many of you, I have found the adjustment to working from home during a pandemic to be a bit of a learning curve. I also share the frustration and disappointment that comes from having research and travel plans changed or cancelled. Further, I was deeply saddened that the pandemic forced us to cancel Kimberly Monk’s talk on her research and field work at the Shickluna Shipyard site (Brock Talks) as well as the thematic Spring HRI symposium that Carmela Colella had been taking the lead on planning. I hope that both of these events can be rescheduled sometime soon.

In recent weeks important and necessary conversations about racial injustice and inequity have been unfolding as well. There is much reflection, rethinking, and rebuilding to be done, and it is important to consider our role as scholars and teachers in this dynamic.

I have been heartened to see so many thoughtful conversations about the value of the Humanities right now. From commentary on how Humanities scholarship is essential for public health discourses to thought-provoking discussions around the role of public monuments, it seems that each and every day I encounter important conversations about why the world so desperately needs storytellers, artists, and researchers asking the kinds of questions we ask in the Faculty of Humanities.i

We did have many opportunities to come together for some important conversations this year. The December HRI symposium was an excellent event, and details are included within this report. Likewise, the Brock Talks we were able to host in partnership with the St. Catharines Public Library provided a wonderful opportunity to showcase some of the excellent work being done within the Faculty of Humanities. The large audiences that turn out for these events is a testament to the engaging, important, and innovative work of our colleagues. I thank everyone who participated in these events as well as everyone who attended. I am also very grateful to Diana Smith and her team from the St. Catharines Public Library for all of their hard work in making the Brock Talks a reality.

This annual report also highlights Adam Dickinson, this year’s recipient of the Faculty of Humanities Award for Excellence in Research and Creative Activity. I offer my sincere congratulations to Adam on this award and encourage you all to think about which of your colleagues you might nominate for this honour next year.

My first year as Director of the HRI and Associate Dean, Research & Graduate Studies was certainly made a lot easier by the generous guidance of Michael Carter who held this position before me. I am also very grateful to Dean Carol Merriam and Michèle Black for their ongoing support and assistance. Likewise, my colleague Neta Gordon, Associate Dean, Undergraduate Student Affairs & Curriculum, has been a constant source of support and for that I am truly grateful.

Finally, I would like to thank the HRI board members for their hard work and dedication to supporting Humanities research through the HRI: Alexander Christie (Centre for Digital Humanities), Jessica Clark (History), Tamara El-Hoss (Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures), Ann Howey (English Language and Literature), Angus Smith (Classics), and Andrew Pendakis (Editor, The Brock Review, English Language and Literature).

Keri Cronin Director, Humanities Research Institute Associate Dean, Research and Graduate Studies

HUMANITIESRESEARCH INSTITUTEANNUAL REPORT 2019-20

i Kirsten Ostherr, “Humanities as Essential Services,” Inside Higher Ed (May 21, 2020): https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2020/05/21/how-humanities-can-be-part-front-line-response-pandemic-opinion; David Olusoga, “The Toppling of Edward Colston’s Statue is Not An Attack on History. It is History.” The Guardian (June 8, 2020): https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/08/edward-colston-statue-history-slave-trader-bristol-protest

DAVID VIVIAN, DIRECTOR OF THE MIWSFPA

The fifth year of the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts (MIWSFPA) at 15 Artists’ Common came to an unwelcome early close with the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic at Brock University on Friday March 13. That week we had celebrated the presence and mentorship of the renowned Canadian painter Landon Mackenzie who had travelled from Vancouver to be the 2019-20 Walker Cultural Leader for the Department of Visual Arts. Following her remarkable artist talk at the Robertson Theatre of the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre we were celebrating among faculty, staff and students at a favourite local restaurant when the messages starting flashing across our screens: in-person teaching was now terminated. We were witnessing the beginning of an historic event that would continue to reveal itself for many months to come.

Rather than review the catalogue of the many profound public engagements that the entire community of the School presented this past year (you can find our season performance calendar and numerous articles and snapshots highlight the rich diverse contributions of the School on our website https://brocku.ca/miwsfpa), I want to take an opportunity to recognize and honour the faculty, staff and students of the School for their grieving, their courage and their tenacity these last few months. Many hearts were saddened when months of impassioned work to prepare for the One Acts Festival or the capstone 4F56 performance, TomorrowLove at the Department of Dramatic Arts were prematurely cut short before the students could hit the stages. The much anticipated end-of-degree exhibition by the graduating visual arts honours studio students, VISA 4F06, was not to open in the venerable halls of the Rodman Hall Arts Centre. The year-end concerts of the Department of Music, including The University Jazz Ensemble/The Brock Big Band for the Hugh and Marie Logan Jazz Series, the University Wind Ensemble, the University String Orchestra, the final concert by the Brock University Choirs for the Viva Voce! Choral Series and the Avanti

Chamber Singers concert: Voices Raised 2.0, were all cancelled. The exhibition organized by the Research Centre in Interdisciplinary Arts and Creative Culture, Industrial Niagara, would open in the Rodman Hall Art Centre but then be closed a day before the eponymous symposium. It remains hanging in the shuttered gallery until this day. Students were directed to return home, buildings were closed. Now a couple months later we are still plumbing new depths of the impact of the pandemic on the arts and culture sector as so many artists, producers, presenters, museums, galleries, orchestras, theatre and dance companies have been prevented from welcoming their publics for which they so earnestly craft their art.

As we bid her adieu for new professional opportunities the School honours the leadership of the interim Director and Curator of Rodman Hall, Marcie Bronson. For all academic programs of the School, notably the Department of Visual Arts and the Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture, Marcie has been a most valued colleague and mentor, stimulating our learning and nurturing our scholarship as she consistently achieved professional success in the face of so many unfathomable situations. The former Director of the School, Professor Derek Knight, joins me in thanking Marcie for her dedication, resourcefulness, and exceptional talents, a colleague whom the faculty, staff and students of the MIWSFPA will always hold in the highest esteem.

And there is good news to share! In the 2020-21 academic year we welcome three new faculty to the School: Drs. Suzanne Morrissette and Troy David Ouellette join the Department of Visual Arts, and Dr. Nina Penner joins the Department of Music. Huzzah!

This brings to a close my tenure as Director of the MIWSFPA. Its been a period of great personal pride to serve my colleagues, our students and our community in this capacity, and I wish them all remarkable futures in good health and prosperity.

| HUMANITIES RESEARCH INSTITUTE ANNUAL REPORT 2019-20 |

A scene from our recent production of Perdita, or The Winter’s Tale, adapted by Gyllian Raby, directed by Gyllian Raby and Danielle Wilson, February-March, 2020. MIW Theatre.

Our Walker Cultural Leader for Music, the distinguished American choral conductor Charles Bruffy, hosted by Dr. Rachel Rensink-Hoff (seen at the piano), conducting a masterclass on the stage of the Recital Hall, November 2019.

Our Walker Cultural Leader for Visual Arts, the distinguished Canadian painter Landon Mackenzie (seen to the right), conducting an in-studio critique with students of Visual Arts, March 2020. Paintings by Curt Richard, BA (Honours) Studio Art, 2020.

View of the installation of Industrial Niagara at Rodman Hall Art Centre Flex Space, March 2020, showing the work of Professors Donna Szőke, Shawn Serfas and Catherine Parayre. (l-r). (Photo: Derek Knight)

THE MARILYN I. WALKER SCHOOL OF FINE AND PERFORMING ARTS A YEAR IN REVIEW 2019-20

ADAM DICKINSON PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

We are currently in the midst of a global pandemic. At this point it is fair to say that the spread of the novel coronavirus disease via transnational travel and shipping corridors is as much a product of global metabolism as it is a product of human metabolic susceptibility. We write our environment as our environment writes us. My ongoing work constitutes a research-creation practice concerned with the

potential of expanded modes of reading and writing to shift the frames and scales of conventional forms of signification in order to bring into focus the often inscrutable biological and cultural writing intrinsic to the Anthropocene, especially as this is reflected in the inextricable link between the metabolic processes of human and nonhuman bodies and the global metabolism of energy and capital. What new modes of creative writing and artwork can be developed to explore and provoke a larger public and political response to this biological and cultural “writing”?

My most recent book, Anatomic (Coach House Books, 2018), responds to chemical and microbial tests on my body. Over a period of several years, I worked with laboratories and scientists in the United States and Canada to measure levels of various pollutants in my blood and urine, including pesticides, heavy metals, flame retardants, PCBs, and phthalates. I also sequenced my microbiome through stool samples and swabbed parts of my body to measure the abundance of microbes living on and in me. How did these chemicals and microbes get into me? How are they biologically active? The book explores their stories in the context of industrial, political, cultural, and evolutionary history.

My current project extends my interest in writing and metabolism. My plan is to reimagine poetic and narrative forms in response to scientific data and procedures by researching and creating work that will emerge from a series of science experiments focused on three permeable surfaces and sites of circulation where the interior of my body is exposed to the exterior world: the senses (anthropogenic influences on touch, sound, and scent), digestion (microbiome responses to antibiotics, microplastics, and synthetic foods), and the blood (biting insects and vector-borne diseases). Experiments include raising and lowering my internal body temperature in a laboratory setting to invite temperature extremes into the creative compositional process in the context of climate change. Other experiments include determining whether “bio-augmenting” a sample of my gut microbes with a species of worm can lead to the degradation of microplastics. In an age when questions of anthropogenic environmental degradation have become culturally pressing and personally as well as globally consequential, a project such as this—that asks fundamental questions about how we write the environment and how the environment writes us—is both timely and necessary and made all the more urgent by the current COVID-19 pandemic.

I am grateful to be this year’s recipient of the “Faculty of Humanities Award for Excellence in Research and Creative Activity.” I am also grateful for the support I have received over the years from the HRI and from my colleagues in the Department of English Language and Literature. and across the university. I have worked (or will work soon) in the laboratories of Jeff Stuart, Glenn Tattersall, Fiona Hunter, and Gary Pickering in the Department of Biological Sciences. Ana Sanchez and Evangelia Litsa Tsiani, in the Department of Health Sciences have been extremely generous with assisting me. Stephen Cheung in the Department of Kinesiology has provided incredible opportunities for me to pursue my work on temperature stress in his Environmental Ergonomics Laboratory. I feel so fortunate to be able to work with such exceptional colleagues.

| HUMANITIES RESEARCH INSTITUTE ANNUAL REPORT 2019-20 |

Heat stress testPhoto Credit: Gary J. Hodges, Environmental Ergonomics Laboratory

In September 2019, Aaron Mauro joined Brock as Assistant Professor of Digital Media in the Centre for Digital Humanities. Previously, he completed his PhD at Queen’s University (Kingston) in contemporary U.S. literature and held a postdoctoral fellowship in the University of Victoria’s Electronic Textual Cultures Lab. Before coming to Brock, he served as Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities and English at Penn State, where he led the curricular development of two undergraduate DH degree programs, while also directing the Penn State Digital Humanities Lab.

He has published articles on U.S. literature and culture in Modern Fiction Studies, Mosaic, and Symplokē among others. He has also published on issues relating to digital humanities in both Digital Studies and Digital Humanities Quarterly. Recently he edited a two volume anthology series entitled Social Knowledge Creation in the Humanities, a joint publication of Iter Press and ACMRS Press, published in both 2017 and 2020. Since arriving at Brock, he has been included in the pedagogy focused edition of Debates in Digital Humanities (University of Minnesota Press 2020), with an article called “Teaching Digital Humanities in the Trump Era.” With the changes brought about by COVID-19, he has twice contributed to The Conversation on topics relating to online privacy and security. His forthcoming monograph, Cybersecurity and the Humanities, will be published by Emerald Press.

In the classroom, Aaron seeks to humanize technology by centering software development around questions of justice, equality, and democracy. His students often develop applications and digital tools designed to solve real world problems. In his first year at Brock, Aaron’s students developed applications for a range of issues that support mental health initiatives, voter engagement, and environmental concerns related to micro-plastics among several others. He also regularly teaches Python workshops on data visualization and Natural Language Processing at the Digital Humanities Summer Institute in Victoria, BC and as far afield as the Winter Institute in Digital Humanities at NYU Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.

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AARON MAURO, CENTRE FOR DIGITAL HUMANITIES

The Dark Redacted

Iswp

2020 Invisibility

The Small Walker Press celebrates creative and analytical thinking; the pleasures of text and image, design and print.

NEW BOOKS BY HRI AUTHORS AND HRI SPONSORED EVENTS

Feb. 28 to March. 7, 2020Feb. 28, 29 and March 6, 7 at 7:30 p.m. March 1 at 2 p.m.March 6 at 11:30 a.m.

Limited parking on site.

Marilyn I. Walker Theatre Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts15 Artists’ Common, St. Catharines

Purchase tickets online at: brocku.universitytickets.com$20 Adults | $16 Seniors/Students

brocku.ca/dramatic-arts

by William Shakespeare | adapted by Gyllian RabyDirected by Danielle Wilson and Gyllian Raby, with Gerry Trentham

Set Design Nigel Scott | Costume Design Alexandra Lord | Lighting Design Chris Malkowski Sound Design and Music Max Holten-Andersen | Assistant Direction Rina Wilkins and Emma McCormick

Brock University’s Departmentof Dramatic Arts presents

Typeface: Bodoni & Futura4 color process

Industrial Niagara Snowy!

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MODERN HORIZONS “RHYTHM, DURATION, PRESENCE”

NICHOLAS HAUCK

Thanks to HRI funding support, on October 25th, 2019 Modern Horizons Journal hosted it’s 9th annual conference “Rhythm, Duration, Presence” in Toronto. The papers and discussions addressed questions of tonality, rhythm, and forms of time in literature, art, and cinema. Along with these spaces and forms, the conversation also touched on the rhythms of everyday life, the habits we survive on and the ones we try to break, the temporal structures that shape our existence, and how presence or being present attunes us to time. Questions were also raised about the body’s presence to our own selves and to others and how this is often shown in patterns and cycles: birth, death, sex, ageing, conversation.

For the conference, eight speakers were invited and there were approximately 30 attendees throughout the day. Nicholas Hauck (Brock, MLLC) moderated the talks and the discussions. Christien Garcia (Toronto) spoke about the syntax of space in cinema; the artist and

scholar Francisco-Fernando Granados (Toronto, OCAD) presented his recent work on the theme of Minor Abstraction; Fan Wu’s (Toronto) performance piece explored the dynamics of group presence; Ricky Varghese (Toronto) presented his work on plasticity and sex in film; Andrew Bingham (Saskatchewan) spoke on forms of presence and rhythms in individual and communal spaces; Marcin Kedzior (Toronto) presented his recent research on the layers of history palpably present in Kensington Market; Brenna MacDougal’s (Brock) essay explored the organization of space and the fabrication of presence on Instagram; and Michael Bourke (Vancouver) spoke on meaning and presence in Davidson and Nietzsche, with a focus on philosophy of language. As with all Modern Horizons conferences, we concluded with a roundtable discussion where speakers and attendees were encouraged to engage with the themes that were explored throughout the day.

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THE HRI SYMPOSIA: 2019-20

The Humanities Research Institute’s Fall Term symposium was held on December 19, 2020 in the Dr. Charles A. Sankey Chamber. The title of the symposium was “Contemporary Currents” which was based on the paper proposals received from members of the Faculty of Humanities.

The Spring Term symposium was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

HRI Fall Term Symposium

Session I:

Chair: Ann Howey, (English Language and Literature)

Elizabeth Vlossak (History), “Digging into the past: Experiential teaching and learning through ‘historical gardening’”

Dan Malleck (Canadian Studies/Health Sciences), “The trouble with temperance. Anti-drink agitation and the liberal ideal in Ontario”

Amy Friend (Visual Arts), “Experiment. Experience. Teaching and Learning through Skype, Camera Construction, Selfies, Portraiture, Curation, and Archives.”

Leah Knight (English Language and Literature), “The Pulter Project: Poet in the Making”

Session II:

Chair: Tamara El-Hoss, (Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures)

Aaron Mauro (Digital Humanities), “3D Data Visualization Techniques for Large Natural Language Corpora”

Tim Kenyon (Vice-President, Research), “Reflect, Speak, Listen: Facilitating the Philosophical Café”

Rachel Rhoades (Dramatic Arts), “Equity in Cultural Transitions: Theatrical Exploration of Transnational Journeys”

Behnaz Mirzai (History), “Mahboob [Sweetheart]: The Journey of an Enslaved African to Iran, a Memoir”

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RESEARCH PROJECTS SUPPORTED BY THE HUMANITIES RESEARCH INSTITUTE, 2019-2020

Natalee Caple (English Language and Literature) – Music Theory lessons and the building of an instrument Tamara El-Hoss (Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures) – Visual Vox Digital Archive: Displacement in Comics, Graphic Novels and Bandes Dessinées Nigel Lezama (Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures) and Jessica Clark (History) – Canadian Critical Luxury Studies: Recentring Luxury Gyllian Raby (Dramatic Arts) – A Glass of Wine with Noam Chomsky, phase two: a full length script and production Donna Szoke (Visual Arts) – Media Art Installation: 36 unringing telephones and other conundrums Elizabeth Vlossak (History) – Making History in Niagara’ Research Toolkit David Fancy (Dramatic Arts) – The Theatre of Three Americas: Stage, Politics, and Fiction. Volume III: North America Karen Fricker (Dramatic Arts) – Making Theatre Global: Robert LePage’s Original Stage Productions Amy Friend (Visual Arts) – The Touch of Land: a Creative Response to Migration and Place Rachel Rhoades (Dramatic Arts) – Research Study with the Niagara Folk Arts Multicultural Centre Shawn Serfas (Visual Arts) – This Kind of Wilderness Angus Smith (Classics) – Summer 2020 Research Trip to Greece for Archaeological Research at Gournia and Khavania on Crete Donna Szoke (Visual Arts) – The Dark Matter Hippo of Grief (A Graphic Novel)

Jessica Clark (History) – Writing Class Canada: Public Engagement and Politics in the New Class History Christine Daigle (Philosophy) – Posthumanism: Cinema Philosophy Media Allison Glazebrook (Classics) – Invited Panel on Classics and Social Justice Nicholas Hauck (Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures) – Modern Horizons’ 9th Annual Conference “Rhythm, Duration, Presence”

CONFERENCES & COLLOQUIA SUPPORTED BY THE HUMANITIES RESEARCH INSTITUTE, 2019-2020

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TAKING IT DOWNTOWN PART IX: BROCK TALKS

The move of the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts to downtown St. Catharines is a good example of Brock’s desire to engage the local community, but there are other ventures as well that are helping to fulfill the strategic priority in Brock’s institutional strategic plan of “Enhance the life and vitality of our local region and beyond.”

In 2012, the Faculty of Humanities began to take its research downtown. The Brock Talks series of public lectures, held at the St. Catharines Public Library, introduced research by Humanities scholars to the local community. The series, organized by Dr. Keri Cronin, Associate Dean, Research and Graduate Studies, Faculty of Humanities, has been a great success. Attendance has often been standing-room only.

The following presentations have been featured in the Brock Talks series in 2019-20:

September 25, 2019

Adam Rappold, Classics:

“Ancient Drama and the Modern Citizen”

October 10, 2019

Elizabeth Vlossak, History:

“FROM CABARET TO BABYLON BERLIN: The Weimar Republic in History and Popular Culture”

November 19, 2019

Katharine T. von Stackelberg, Classics:

“How to Eat a Flamingo: What Ancient Rome Can Teach Us About Our Relationship with Food”

January 16, 2020

Neta Gordon, English Language and Literature:

“Three Ways of reading Fables: a survey of Bill Willingham’s comic book series”

February 26, 2020

Jessica Clark, History:

“Scents of Change: Writing Sensory Histories”

March 18, 2020 (Cancelled due to COVID-19 pandemic.)

Kimberly Monk, History:

“Reading St. Catharines’ Maritime Past: 2019 Shickluna Shipyard Project”

For more information regarding the Humanities Research Institute Annual Report 2019-2020, Contact: Keri Cronin, jcronin@brocku.ca ext. 5306