ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ our 2025 Speaker: Brett Story is an award-winning filmmaker, geographer and writer. Her interests across the fields of documentary and critical theory are expansive, and include experimental cinema and essay films, prisons and abolition, political geography, critical theory, racial capitalism and Marxist political economy.

Her films have screened in festivals around the world, including CPH-DOX, the Viennale, SXSW, True/False, and Sheffield DocFest. Her 2016 feature documentary, The Prison in Twelve Landscapes, was awarded the Special Jury Prize at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival and was a nominee for Best Feature Length Documentary at the Canadian Screen Awards. Brett’s third feature documentary, The Hottest August, was released to critical acclaim in March 2019. The film was a New York Times Critics’ Pick, where it was described as “a cinematic gift, an intellectual challenge, an emotional adventure.” The Hottest August was broadcast on PBS’ Independent Lens in 2020 and was featured in over a dozen best of the year lists, including in Rolling Stone, Vulture, and Vanity Fair magazines.

Story is the author of the book Prison Land: Mapping Carceral Power Across Neoliberal America, and she holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Toronto. She has held fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Sundance Institute, and MacDowell. Brett was named by Variety as one of 2019’s “10 Documentary Filmmakers to Watch.”

Story’s most recent feature documentary, Union, co-directed with Steve Maing will be screening at Pique on Saturday September 27th.

7:30 Thursday-Saturday

Join award-winning interdisciplinary artist Jesse Stewart for a one-person show that weaves together storytelling and music to celebrate individuals who have left an indelible mark on the playwright’s life. With a blend of humour, emotion, and introspection, each character comes to life through engaging anecdotes and musical interludes performed on a variety of unusual musical instruments. From an enigmatic factory worker with a teardrop tattoo, to a US-marine-turned-Buddhist-priest-and-sculptor, Characters delves deep into the profound impact that diverse personalities can have on our own lives and stories.

Suitable for all ages.

Run time approximately 2h

Holding degrees in music, visual art, and English and theatre studies, Oshawa-born/Ottawa-based interdisciplinary artist Jesse Stewart is dedicated to reimagining the spaces between artistic disciplines. His music has been documented on over twenty recordings including Stretch Orchestra’s self-titled debut album, which was honoured with the 2012 “Instrumental Album of the Year” Juno award. Having been widely commissioned as a composer and artist, he has created instruments, music, performance art works, and interactive sound art installations using such diverse materials as stone, ice, water, fire, glass, books, turntables, chemical reactions, and more.

His work has been heralded by critics, journalists, and creative practitioners from around the globe who have described it as “truly exciting” (Musicworks 76), “exceptional” (Cadence Oct. 2002), “phenomenal” (Cadence Nov. 1999), and “ingenious” (Exclaim! June 2006). “Stewart quietly opens the door for us to a limitless world of delicate sonic beauty” writes Randy Raine-Reusch in Musicworks 97. “Highly recommended ear-cleansing” states a review in Italy’s Touching Extremes (2007). “Jesse Stewart is an eloquent and poetically powerful percussionist, composer, improviser and teacher—a man of ideas and inventions,” writes jazz legend William Parker. “Jesse is an incredibly innovative artist. He’s a performance artist, he’s a jazz drummer, he’s an incredible creative force” states Roman Borys, cellist with the internationally acclaimed Gryphon Trio. “He’s extraordinary,” states creative polymath Michael Snow, “he is constantly surprising.”

, his first one-person show that was performed at the Gladstone Theatre in July 2023, received rave reviews. A film of that show has been making waves internationally as an official selection at multiple film festivals and was named “Best Feature Film” by the Experimental Dance & Music Film Festival in Toronto.

Jesse Stewart is a professor of music in ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University’s music program and an adjunct professor in the visual arts department at the University of Ottawa.

Regular $41

Regular(65+) $37

Student/Artist/Unwaged $26

Angel $75**

*All prices include taxes and non-negotiable facility fee

**Angel tickets are for any “Angel” who wants to go above and beyond in supporting Jesse Stewart.

The Gladstone only retains the facility fee.

Weaving Together: The Art of Shirley Bear

Curatorial Studies seminar students invite all to visit the exhibition, Weaving Together: The Art of Shirley Bear, presented on the main floor of MacOdrum Library (the large wall nearest the big windows, to the left of the main doors) from April 22 to May 30, 2024.

This exhibition features a selection of works by Shirley Bear (1936-2022), Wolastoqiyik artist, poet, curator, herbalist, and respected Elder from Neqotkuk (Tobique First Nation) in Wabanaki territory, also known as New Brunswick. Through nine of Bear’s works and two pieces of her poetry, Weaving Together considers basketry as a metaphor for relationality. Just as splints of ash are woven together to form a basket, Bear reveals Wabanaki life as a constellation of entwined relationships between people, community, and land across generations. In this way, her work encourages a different — and more malleable — understanding of time. The works are selected from the collection and are being exhibited for the first time since their donation to the gallery in 1995.

Weaving Together: The Art of Shirley Bear is curated by Victoria Hawco, Hanako Hubbard-Radulovich, Maya Maayergi, Dana Martin-Wylie, Melanie Nunez, Sevane Paroyan and Peter Salmon, graduate students enrolled in a winter 2024 Curatorial Studies seminar taught by Alexandra Kahsenni:io Nahwegahbow, in partnership with ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University Art Gallery.

The curators respectfully acknowledge our location on the traditional, unceded territories of the Algonquin Nation, and wish to thank the staff at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University Art Gallery and the Indigenous Art Centre (Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada), and Emma Hassencahl-Perley for their help, support and sound advice in the development of this exhibition.

Image:
Shirley Bear (1936-2022)
Wolastoqiyik, Neqotkuk (Tobique First Nation)
Basket Weaver (1988)
Woodcut on paper, edition 5/7
Collection of ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University Art Gallery: Gift of Lesley Sinclair, 1995
Photo by Patrick Lacasse

The event will take place at the National Gallery of Canada Lecture Hall. Free event, no registration required.

The book can be purchased in the NGC Boutique and is available online at . The author will be available to sign copies following the event.

In English, with simultaneous French-language translation.

For full details: /ctca/cu-events/sarah-phillips-casteel-black-lives-under-nazism-making-history-visible-in-literature-and-art/

This event is organized by the Centre for Transnational Cultural Analysis in partnership with the National Gallery of Canada. The CTCA gratefully acknowledges the support of the Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Art, and Culture, and the Department of English Literature and Language at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University.

Event Information:

The Heidelberg University team of Worlding Public Cultures: The Arts and Social Innovation in collaboration with Ming Tiampo (WPC / ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University) and Birgit Hopfener (WPC / ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University), in cooperation with ICI Berlin, invite students and scholars to join this special event on Monday, October 10th, 2022 at 12 PM.

The Graduate Steering Committee for the Centre for Transnational Cultural Analysis (CTCA) is pleased to invite you to the second of a two-part discussion series on land rights. On January 7^th, RCMP and armed military personnel arrested and removed peaceful land protectors from Wet’suwet’en anti-pipeline camps. Wet’suwet’en First Nation is unceded territory with governance structures in place that require hereditary chiefs to give their consent to the development of their lands. No such consent has been granted.

This discussion will push back against this and many other violent interferences in Indigenous self-governance. Our invited speakers, Summer Twenish () and Ginger Cote () will discuss how to better support and reaffirm the rights of Indigenous nations to protect and preserve their lands.

This session is part of The Friday Table, a series of weekly Friday afternoon events organized by the Graduate Steering Committee for the Centre for Transnational Cultural Analysis (CTCA) and the Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Culture (ICSLAC) at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University. We aim to bolster the Centre’s mandate to bring together scholars and students working with transnational approaches to studies in the humanities through regular, informal workshops, roundtables, film screenings, and discussion groups. The Friday Table seeks to foster collegiality and promote student-led research. Events are free and open to all.

This session is also organized in collaboration with the Indigenous + Diasporic Friendship Festival. The Indigenous + Diasporic Friendship Festival is a bi-yearly event that focuses on the education and celebration of Indigenous cultures in Canada and around the world. Please visit their  for more information.

Upcoming Workshops

Title: Decolonizing Lusophone Africa

Speakers: Candace Sobers (Global and International Studies) and Joana Pimentel (Cultural Mediations PhD candidate)

Date/Time: Friday April 8^th 2016, 2-4pm

Location: ICSLAC seminar room

Please join us on Wednesday, November 18, 2015 in Room 201D, ICSLAC Seminar Room, St. Patrick’s Building at 11:30 AM

is Director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada and a Professor in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill as well as an Adjunct Professor with the Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Culture, ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University.

This talk is sponsored by the Department of Canadian Studies and the Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Culture, ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University. To view the full poster, see