Dr. Gabrielle Moser, adjunct professor in art history in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences and School of Interdisciplinary Studies, will take on the role of Fulbright Visiting Scholar in the department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University in the winter 2017 semester. Dr. Moser’s research project, “Picturing race and citizenship: photography and belonging in the US and Canada, 1900-1948,” aims to build a visual vocabulary of citizenship by analyzing how photographers, subjects, and viewers used the camera to make claims for belonging in the United States and Canada in the first half of the twentieth century.
“Canada’s adoption of the Citizenship Act (1947) late in the 20th century means the idea of citizenship, and its representation, circulated for decades before being enshrined in law, shaping the experiences of minority groups, immigrants and indigenous subjects on both sides of the border,” said Dr. Moser. "The more work I do in the archive, the more I am interested in the period of 1946-48 in Canada because it allows me to examine Canadian visual citizenship from a transnational perspective that puts it into conversation with world events during this period.”
The project imagines citizenship beyond its legal definitions, as a visual and social practice. By looking at five instances in Canada's photographic record, the research examines how people of colour and indigenous subjects appealed to global ideas of rights and belonging to picture themselves as citizens.
“I am thrilled to celebrate Dr. Moser's research success. The Fulbright Visiting Scholar award is complemented by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Development Grant; her work is one example of the exemplary research being undertaken in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences and School of Interdisciplinary Studies at the university,” said Dr. Robert Luke, OCAD University Vice-President, Research and Innovation.
Dr. Moser will present an excerpt from her research in progress as part of The Walrus Talks Conversations about Canada: We Desire A Better Country, coming to Toronto on May 31, 2017 which includes talks by Margaret Atwood, Deepa Mehta and Syrus Marcus Ware. More information can be found at The Walrus’s website.