MA in Contemporary Arts
MFA in Interdisciplinary Studies
BA in Art, Performance, and Cinema Studies
Here in the School for Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University I teach in the BA in Art, Cinema, and Performance Studies, the MA in Contemporary Arts, the MFA in Interdisciplinary Studies, and (as of fall 2021) the Ph.D. in Contemporary Arts. Graduate students learn to identify their object of study and the research methods that will best embrace it. All students learn to think about art by drawing close to it and attending to their affective, perceptual, and finally conceptual responses, in what I call affective analysis. Artists learn to do research that illuminates but does not overwhelm their practice. Teaching art-friendly ways of thinking, I help students pursue the delicate task of translating the experience of a work of art into the medium of writing.
Nasal strips get air to the brain—Graduate Research Methods, fall 2017
Students, and other monads, in “Arts and Philosophies of the Fold,” spring 2015. Photo: Laura Marks
Graduate supervision at Simon Fraser University
Postdoctoral
Dr. Farshid Kazemi, University of Edinburgh. "A Cinematic Cosmos in Process: Islamic Philosophy, Process Philosophy, German Idealism, and Cinematic Media." 2019-2020.
Dr. Siying Duan, Shanghai Film Academy, “'Poetic image (Yi Xiang)' and 'Poetic world (Yi Jing)' in the Living Scene of Media Art Practice." 2018-2020.
Dr. Hudson Moura, “The Intermedial Frontiers of Exile in Intercultural Cinema.” 2004-2006.
Ph.D.
Supervisor, Joni Low. PhD in Contemporary Arts. Commenced September 2021.
Supervisor, Niusha Hatefinia. PhD in Contemporary Arts. Commenced September 2021.
Supervisor, Jordan Strom. Ph.D. via Individual Interdisciplinary Studies. Commenced September 2019.
Supervisor, Daisy Esegbona Thompson. Ph.D. via Individual Interdisciplinary Studies. “Kinaesthetic Strike.” Co-supervising with Peter Dickinson. Commenced September 2016.
Supervisor, Yani Kong. Ph.D. via Individual Interdisciplinary Studies. “A Present Bond: crisis, possibility, and a theory of enchantment in contemporary art.” Commenced September 2015.
Supervisor, Andrew Czink, Ph.D. in Liberal Studies. “Philosophy of Embodied Musical Practices.” In progress.
Host supervisor, Hongyan Sun (Communication University of China, Beijing). “Haptics in Puppet Animation.” 2017-2018.
Supervisor, Tyler Fox, Ph.D. in Interactive Arts and Technology. “Transductive Praxis in BioArt: Relational Ontology and Aesthetics of Nonhuman Experience.” Defended, May 2015.
Supervisor, Aleksandra Dulic, Ph.D. in Interactive Art and Technology. “Fields of Interaction: From Shadow Play Theatre to Media Performance.” Defended, May 2006.
MFA
Senior supervisor, Homa Khosravi. Defended, December 2022.
Senior supervisor, Somayeh Khakshoor. “Where I heard your voice.” Defended October 2022.
Senior supervisor, Asmaa Al-Issa. “Visiting hundun’s territory.” Defended, September 2017.
Supervisor, Vilhelm Sundin. “Situations.” Defended, September 2016.
Supervisor, Deborah Edmeades. “On the Validity of Illusion (and Its Attractions).” Defended, September 2014.
Supervisor, Juan Manuel Sepulveda Martínez. “The Ballad of Oppenheimer Park.” Defended, March 2014.
Senior supervisor, Jeffrey Langille. “How Is It That There Is Always Something New?” Defended, October 2014.
Senior supervisor, Alize Zorlotuna. “Queering Islamicate Aesthetics.” Defended, September 2013.
Senior supervisor, Sydney Koke. “Holographic Universe.” Defended, September 2013.
Supervisor, Charlene Vickers. “My Breath, My Gravity: My Anishinabe Indexical Opens, Pops and Riffs.” Defended, September 2013.
Supervisor, Hamidreza Jadid. “Temporary Marriage.” Defended, September 2013.
Senior supervisor, Edith Artner. “Surfbox on a Moving Platform.” Defended, September 2011.
Senior supervisor, Natalie Sorenson. “The Life’s Work of Murphy Piltdown.” Defended, March 2010.
Supervisor, Adrian Buitenhuis, MFA, “HWY 99.” Defended, November 2008.
Supervisor, Sharon Kahanoff, MFA, “The Here to Gathered.” Defended, September 2008.
Senior supervisor, Emily Rosamond. “Chewing Chewing Chewing Social Space.” Defended, October 2007.
Senior supervisor, Amanda Christie. “Sensuous Machines: Embodied Mechanics of Cinematic Performances.” Defended, May 2007.
Supervisor, Donna Szoke, MFA. “Optics out of Shadows: The Presence of Absence.” Defended, March 2007.
Senior supervisor, Jacky Sawatzky. “The RGB Project.” Defended, December 2004.
MA in Contemporary Arts (formerly Comparative Media Arts)
Supervisor, Katie Yeo. “Korean Division Cinema: Food and Unification.” In progress.
Supervisor, Alexandra Tsay. “Another Turn: Contemporary art in Kazakhstan.” In progress.
Supervisor, Hardi Bhila. “Photo Narratives: analyzing caste hierarchy in India through Sudharak Olwe’s lens.” Completed April 2021.
Supervisor, Joey Malbon. “Fun and Good Ways to Break the Law: Videofreex, Telestreet and Pirate Television’s Potential within Emancipatory Media Activism.” Completed April 2021.
Supervisor, Joshua Marquis. “Mixing, Poking and Compiling: The Slime Video Assemblage and Digital Affective Economies.” Completed March 2021.
Supervisor, Madison Mayhew. Completed August 2020.
Supervisor, Weihsin Lee. “‘Attractive Grouping’—Short Film Program and The Cinema of Attractions.” Completed December 2020.
Supervisor, Israt Taslim. “Liberating a Queer Body in Rituparno Ghosh’s Chitrangada: The Crowning Wish (2012).” Complete August 2020
Supervisor, Kwyn Kenaz Aquino. “Curating the Moving Image: Filmmaker Chantal Akerman’s Crossover to the Museum.” Completed December 2019.
Supervisor, Cindy Chan. “Dream Vision Through the Environmental Scenes in Weerasethakul’s Cemetery of Splendor.” Completed December 2019.
Supervisor, Michelle Kim. “Eating the Screen like Ice Cream: How heung is expressed aesthetically in South Korean cinema.” Completed December 2019.
Supervisor, Maria Filipina Palad. “An Aesthetics of Virtual Reality Art Through Embodied Immersion and Interaction.” Completed December 2019.
Supervisor, Zaki Rezwan. “The Art of Resistance: Exploring Rickshaw Art through the Mapping of Individual Film Reception in Bangladesh.” Completed December 2019.
Supervisor, Negar Ipakchiazemi. “How Reenactment as a Process of Becoming Intensifies Reality.” Completed December 2019.
Supervisor, Jason Margolis. “Place as Memory: Time Travel via Backgrounds in Immersive Digital Environments.” Completed April 2019.
Supervisor, Diego Slosse. “Not just another surf and snowboard movie: On embodied transcendency in Higher and Nervous Laughter.” Completed December 2018.
Supervisor, Rose Anza-Burgess. “Disgust, Desire, and Transformation.” Completed December 2018.
Supervisor, Mallory Gemmell. “Cinematic Curating: All I Need Is the Air I Breathe.” Completed December 2018.
Supervisor, Micaela Kwiatkowski. “What Would Lilith Do?” Completed December 2018.
Supervisor, Michelle Martin. “Stories That Slow: Narrative Abundance and Austerity in Miguel Gomes’ Arabian Nights.” Completed December 2017.
Supervisor, Minah Lee. “Third Skin: The Borderless Surface of Migrants’ Creative Resistance.” Completed December 2017.
Supervisor, Yumna Iftikhar. “The Lion and the Lamb: A Molecular Analysis of the Vampire ‘Reveal’ Scene.” Completed December 2017.
Supervisor, Lee Gilad. “Richter, Kippenberger and Bergemann: Capitalist and Communist Memories of the Holocaust.” Completed December 2016.
Supervisor, Dionne Horacsek. “Manic-Pixie and Melancholia: Analyzing the Expressive Potential in the Self(less).” Completed December 2016.
Supervisor, Megan Jones. “Something about Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai.” Completed December 2016.
Supervisor, Jorma Kujala. "See Me, Feel Me, Touch, Me, Hear Me: Embodied Cognition and Soundwalks." Completed April 2016.
Supervisor, Jelena Beocovich. “Turbo Folk.” Completed December 2015.
Supervisor, Carolina Bergonzoni. “Presence in Dance – Practical Strategies in a Choreographic Process: An Analysis of Rob Kitsos’s new work Saudade.” Completed December 2015.
Supervisor, Elysia Bourne. “The Sense Image and the Resurrection of Cultural Memory: elements of haptic image, duration and objecthood in Sergei Parajanov’s The Colour of Pomegranates (1968).” Completed December 2015.
Supervisor, Kristina Fiedrich. “The Glut of Faciality: investigating the resonance of biometric technologies in contemporary portraiture.” Completed December 2015.
Supervisor, Molly Grant. “Dynamics of Experience: Visual Ethnographies and Corporeal Knowledge in The Enclave.” Completed December 2015.
Supervisor, Mandy Ginson. “Surface Effects: Collage, Photomontage and Contemporary Internet Aesthetics.” Completed December 2015.
Supervisor, Rebecca Karpus. “Defining Ballerina: Degas, Shonibare, and ballerina media.” Completed December 2015.
Supervisor, Maria Cecilia Saba Bonilla. “Altered Realities: Visceral journeys into post-war Peruvian Andean horror films.” Completed December 2015.
Supervisor, Bridget Uhl. “Framing Uncharted Territory with Digital Storytelling.” Completed December 2015.
Supervisor, Justin Ramsey. Completed April 2015.
Supervisor, Dillon Ramsey. Completed April 2015.
Supervisor, Bob Christie. “New Millennium Queer Cinema and the Affects of Joy.” Completed December 2014.
MA in Interactive Art and Technology
Supervisor, Maria Federova. “Performing Political: Precarious Aesthetics of Digital Video in Capturing Activist Performance.” Defended, May 2015.
Supervisor, Özgün Eylül İşcen. “Migrating Embodied Experiences: The Convergence of Sensory Ethnography and Experimental Documentary.” Defended, May 2014.
MA in Communications, SFU
Supervisor, Helma Sawatzky. “Unfolding Presence: An Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis of Photography.” Defended, September 2011.
MA in History
Senior supervisor, Sabita Majid. “Bollywood’s Diasporan Audience.” Defended, May 2008.
Graduate supervision, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand
Supervisor, Azadeh Emadi, Ph.D. in Art and Design, “Motion within Motion: Investigating Digital Video in the Light of Substantial Motion.” Defended, August 2014.
Graduate supervision, Helsinki Academy of the Arts, Finland
Doctoral advisor, Tarja Pitkanen-Walter, Ph.D. in Fine Arts. “From Amodal Perception To Abstract Representation – Re-Interpretation Of Modernist Painting.” Defended, June 2006.
Graduate supervision, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Toronto
Supervisor, Gabrielle Hezekiah, Ph.D. “Experimentation, mediation, and Knowledge: The Videos of Robert Yao Ramesar.” Defended, February 20, 2006.
Graduate supervision, Carleton University, Ottawa
Senior supervisor, James Missen, “Fringe Experientiality: Canadian Experimental Film and Video as Affective Cultural Theory,” M.A. thesis in Film Studies, Carleton University. Defended April 2002.
Senior supervisor, Maria Ramadori, “Phenomenal Bodies: Relocating the Senses in Canadian Feminist Experimental Cinema,” M.A. thesis in Canadian Studies, Carleton University. Defended May 2001.
Senior supervisor, Barbara Rockburn, “Bonne Entente: Elliptical Elisions and Canadian Narrative Structure,” M.A. thesis in Canadian Studies, Carleton University. Defended September 1997.
Graduate external examination
Maj Ørskov, “Afterimages of the 2011 Egyptian Uprising: Subjectivities of Becoming in Contemporary Experimental Cinema.” PhD dissertation, School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University. 2023.
Respondent, Borbála Maté, “Haptics and (Eco)Trauma Experience in Avant-Garde Documentary Films.” Universität für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna, 2021.
Respondent, Mai Ørskov. School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University, 2021.
Sol Hashemi. MFA, University of British Columbia Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory, 2021.
Dion Smith-Dokke. MFA, University of British Columbia Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory, 2021.
Mriganka Madhukaillya, “The Cinema Is Missing: In Search of the Ontological Temperature of Being in Northeast India.” PhD, Department of Design, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, 2020.
Elia Eilev Rémillard, “Uneasy Acts: Queer Masculinities in Akram Zaatari's Lens-Based Artworks,” Ph.D. in Women’s Studies, University of Ottawa, 2018
Adiba Muzaffar, “Skin as feeling vessel,” MFA, Emily Carr University of Art and Design, 2018
Paul Goodfellow, “Art as a Distributed Ecosystem: mapping the limits of systems-based art,” Ph.D., Faculty of Arts, Design and Social Sciences, Northumbria University, 2018
Mohsen Nasrin, “The Intensity of Recollection-Images in Suspicious River and The Law of Enclosures”, Ph.D. in Cultural Mediations, Carleton University, 2016
Nick Dicecco, “The Ends of Adaptation: Comparative Media, Digital Culture, and Performance,” Ph.D. in English, Simon Fraser University, 2015
Mansoor Behnam, “Rhizomatic Thinking: Mystical Philosophy in Experimental Film and Video Art,” Ph.D. in Cultural Studies, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, 2015
Tammer El Sheikh, " Strategies of refusal: art and cultural politics in the work of Edward W. Said and Hassan Khan," Department of Art History & Communication, McGill University, 2013
Christian Suhr, “Descending with Angels: Psychiatry, Exorcism, and the Invisible in Denmark,” Ph.D. in Anthropology and Ethnography, University of Aarhus, Denmark, 2013.
Tereza Stehlikova, "Tangible Territory: Inviting the Body into the Experience of Moving Image," Ph.D. in Animation, Royal College of Art, London, 2012
Moderator, Nasim Zamanzadeh, "New Media, Communication Networks and Contemporary Art in Iran; Recognizing Iranian contemporary art practices through Sufism" (to determine whether the candidate should move from M.Phil to Ph.D. program)
Ilona Hongisto, “Soul of the Documentary: Expression and the Capture of the Real,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Turku, Finland, 2011
Kjetil Rodje, “Seeing Red: Blood Images in American Cinema, 1958-1969, Ph.D. dissertation, School of Communication, Simon Fraser University, 2011
Nour Dados, “Lost and Found in Beirut: Memory and Place in Narratives of the City,” Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Communication, University of Technology Sydney, 2010
Mahmoud Yektaparast, "An Aesthetics of Anger," Ph.D. dissertation, University of Western Sydney, 2009
Saige Nadine Walton, "Cinema's Baroque Flesh," Ph.D. dissertation, University of Melbourne, 2009
Mary Watson-Seoighe, “The Cutting Edge: Deviant Realisms and Cinematic Interruption,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cape Town, 2007.
Jennifer Deger, “Shimmering Screens: Media, Mimesis, and a Vision of Yolngu Modernity,” Ph.D. dissertation, Macquarie University, Department of Anthropology, 2004.
Numerous internal examinations, M.A. in Film Studies, Carleton University
Melinda Swalwell, “Aesthetics and Hyper/Aesthetics: Rethinking the Senses in Contemporary Media Contexts,” Ph.D. thesis, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology, Sydney, September 2002
Hudson Moura, “L’Image-exil,” Ph.D. thesis, Département des Littératures Comparés, Université de Montréal, July 2002
Michel Luc Bellemare, “ Guy Debord and the Future of Anarchism,” M.A. thesis, Mass Communication, Carleton University, August 2001
Jenefer Curtis, “Wait a Minute Mr. Postman! Neil Postman’s Critique of Media Culture,” M.A. thesis, Mass Communication, Carleton University, July 2001
Lazarus L.D.K. Dokora, “A Postcolonial Paradigm for Mass Communications in Zimbabwe,” M.A. thesis, Mass Communication, Carleton University, May 2000
