Society and Culture

HADVC Collaborative Forum Supports Research and Development

Art & Design professors Betsy Boone and Lianne McTavish hosted a group of 18 international scholars in October at a SSHRC-funded workshop designed to provide a collaborative forum in which to develop essays to be included in their forthcoming anthology, "Exhibiting Animals in Europe and America".

Betsy Boone, Department of Art + Design - 12 December 2023

forum participants pose in front of the projection screen

Forum participants pose in front of the projection screen. Photo supplied.

Art & Design professors Betsy Boone and Lianne McTavish hosted a group of 18 international scholars in October at a SSHRC-funded workshop designed to provide a collaborative forum in which to develop essays to be included in their forthcoming anthology, Exhibiting Animals in Europe and America. These essays will help us to understand how our ways of positioning (and ex-positioning) animals have separated us from the other-than-human animals that are an integral part of our interconnected world. The topics and conversations were fascinating, with technology allowing several participants unable to make the journey to Banff to join the conversation virtually. The day’s events were followed by a demonstration of Professor McTavish’s collaborative virtual reality project, in which she is recreating the enclosure provided at the Banff Park Zoo for Buddy the Polar Bear, and a guided tour of the Banff Park Museum, with its impressive taxidermical display from the early twentieth century.

participants explore Professor McTavish’s collaborative virtual reality project

Participants explore Professor McTavish’s collaborative virtual reality project. Photo supplied.

In addition to Betsy and Lianne, the participants included Kieran Anger (University of Alberta), Valérie Bienvenue (Université de Montréal), Catherine Burdick (Universidad Mayor in Santiago, Chile),  Allison Caplan (Yale University), Heather Caverhill (University of British Columbia), Keri Cronin (Brock University), Annabel Crop Eared Wolf (Blood Tribe), Marjie Crop Eared Wolf (Káínai / Secwépemc), Jessica Dallow (University of Alabama at Birmingham), Catherine Girard (St. Francis Xavier University), Katie Hornstein (Dartmouth College), Elizabeth Hutchinson (Barnard College, Columbia University), Naomi Slipp (New Bedford Whaling Museum), Maya Stanfield-Mazzi (University of Florida), Claire Thomson (Parks Canada), Stephanie Triplett (Freie Universitaet Berlin), Patricia Zalamea (Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia), and Tara Zanardi (Hunter College, City University of New York). Rojina Sabetiashraf, MA candidate in the History of Art, Design, and Visual Culture, is providing Graduate Research Assistant support for this project.

participants present their research to the group

Participants present their research to the group. Photo supplied.