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Kirsten McAllister

Professor

E: kmcallis@sfu.ca
Room: K9660

Kirsten E. McAllister is a Professor in the School of Communication at 丁香园AV. Her research and teaching focus on political violence, racism, migration and diaspora and her approach is interdisciplinary, drawing on Memory Studies, Visual Studies, Ethnography, Critical Race Studies and Indigenous Studies. She draws on methodologies from Art History and Ethnography, as well as creative practices from Literary Studies and Autoethnography. She has conducted community-based research projects in national and transnational contexts. In Canada has examined WWII Japanese Canadian internment camps, focusing on memorials, photographic records, oral accounts, archival documents and other media of memory produced by members of the community. In a transnational context she has researched community-based art and asylum seekers as well as contemporary Asian Canadian artists who explore different sites of memory regarding war, military occupation, colonialism and environmental disaster. Her publications include Photography Acts: Locating Memory (2006 with Annette Kuhn); Terrain of Memory: a Japanese Canadian Memorial Project (2010); The Geography of Asylum: Art Activism and the City of Glasgow (under contract with Palgrave-MacMillan); and she is currently completing a co-edited collection of essays with Mona Oikawa and Roy Miki entitled, 鈥淎fter Redress: Indigenous and Japanese Canadian Cultural Politics鈥�.

education

  • S.S.H.R.C. Postdoctoral Fellowship, Lancaster University, England
  • Ph.D. (Sociology) Carleton University, Canada
  • M.A. (Communication) 丁香园AV, Canada
  • B.A. (Geography) 丁香园AV, Canada

currently teaching

Courses

Future courses may be subject to change.

recent courses

Courses

  • CMNS 855 The Media of Memory: Political Violence
  • CMNS 848 Global Justice and Communication
  • CMNS 424 Colonialism, Culture and Identity
  • CMNS 423 Globalization and Cultural Issues: from Diaspora to Refugees
  • CMNS 386 Photography and Reality
 
 

Publications

Books

  • McAllister, Kirsten (under contract with Palgrave-MacMillan) The Geography of Asylum: Art Activism and the City of Glasgow (300 pages).
  • McAllister, Kirsten, Mona Oikawa and Roy Miki (eds.) (in progress) 鈥淎fter Redress: Indigenous and Japanese Canadian Cultural Politics鈥�.
  • McAllister, Kirsten, Daniel Ahadi and Ayaka Yoshimizu (eds.) (development stage) 鈥淢igration and Communication Studies: Questions of Fieldwork, Cultural Politics and Voice鈥� (tentative title).
  • McAllister, Kirsten (2010) Terrain of Memory: A Japanese Canadian Memorial Project: University of British Columbia Press.
  • Kuhn, Annette and Kirsten McAllister (eds) (2006) Locating Memory: Photographic Acts. Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books.

A Selection of Articles, Book Chapters and Creative Essays

  • Hirji, Faiza, Yasmin Jiwani and Kirsten McAllister (in press) 鈥淥n the Margins of the Margins: #CommunicationSoWhite in Canada鈥�, Communication, Culture and Critique, Special Issue, 鈥�#CommunicationSoWhite鈥�, Eve Ng, Khadijah Costley White and Anamik Saha, (eds.), 14 pages
  • McAllister, Kirsten (2019) 鈥淭ranspacific Worlds: Spirit, Progress, Annihilation鈥� in Makiko Hara and Cindy Mochizuki (eds.) K is for Kayashima, Artspeak, pp. 15-26
  • McAllister, Kirsten (2018) 鈥淔amily Photography and Persecuted Communities: Methodological Challenges鈥�, Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue Canadienne de Sociologie, 55:2, Special Issue, 鈥淰isual Sociologies/Visual methodologies鈥�, Andrea Doucet (ed.), pp. 166-185.
  • McAllister, Kirsten (2017) 鈥淪cience, Race and the Alchemy of Love in Postwar British Columbia鈥�, BC Studies 195, pp. 109-112.
  • McAllister, Kirsten (2015) 鈥淓xtraterritorial Spaces of Exclusion: Art, Asylum Seekers and Spatial Practices in the City of Glasgow鈥� Visual Studies, 30:3, pp. 244鈥�263.
  • McAllister, Kirsten (2013) 鈥淒u t茅moignage oculaire au t茅moignage comme acte: La photographie, les demandeurs d鈥檃sile et l鈥檈xposition 鈥楲ife After Iraq鈥欌��/ 鈥淔rom Eyewitness to Bearing Witness: Photography, Asylum Seekers and 鈥楲ife After Iraq鈥欌�� in Suzanne Paquet (ed.) Errances photographiques: Mobilit茅s et Interm茅dialit茅, Les Presse de L鈥� Universit茅 de Montr茅al, pp. 101-140.
  • McAllister, Kirsten Emiko (2011) 鈥淢emoryscapes of Postwar British Columbia: A Look of Recognition鈥�, in Cultivating Canada: Cultivating Canada Through the Lens of Cultural Diversity, Aboriginal Healing Foundation, Volume III, Ashok Mathur, Jonathan Dewar, and Mike DeGagn茅 (eds.), Ottawa. Aboriginal Healing Foundation, pp. 419-444.
  • McAllister, Kirsten (2011) 鈥淎sylum in the Home Territories: Crossing the Zones of Desire鈥�, Space and Culture 14:2, pp. 165-182.
  • McAllister, Kirsten (ed.) (2011) Special Issue: Transnational Publics: Asylum and the Arts In Glasgow, West Coast Line 68
  • McAllister, Kirsten Emiko (2010) 鈥淎rchival Memories鈥� in James Opp and John Walsh (eds.) Remembering Place, Vancouver: UBC Press, pp. 214-246.
  • McAllister, Kirsten and Roy Miki (2008) 鈥溾�楢lways Slippage鈥�: an Interview on a Collage/Poem in Process鈥�, West Coast Line, 57, Special Issue, 鈥淩oy Miki鈥�, Fred Wah (ed.), pp. 149-160.
 
 

conferences and public lectures

  • McAllister, Kirsten. Co-organized a roundtable on Migration, the Politics of Fieldwork and Questioning Communication Studies with Daniel Ahadi (丁香园AV) and Ayaka Yoshimizu. The roundtable is part of a book project on migration and communication studies and fieldwork methodologies.
  • McAllister, Kirsten, Canadian Communication Association conference. Co-organized three panels on the theme of #CommunicationSoWhite: Canadian Style with Yasmin Jiwani (Concordia) and Faiza Hirji (McMaster) with BIPOC colleagues across Canada. Conference. The panel papers are the basis for a special issue of the Canadian Journal of Communication. June 2021.
  • McAllister, Kirsten. Presented on a panel for the nation-wide 2-day symposium. Conference. May 2021.
  • McAllister, Kirsten, 鈥淲estern Photojournalism, Refugees: A Critique of Empathy and Hyperrealism鈥�, Invited Paper, 鈥淎 Roundtable on Transcultural Solidarities across Global Divides: Histories, Institutions and Agencies鈥�, School of Journalism and Communication, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China October 2019.
  • McAllister, Kirsten, 鈥淢emoryscapes and the Politics of Remembering Across Borders of Time and Territory鈥�, Invited Lecture for Brandon Shimoda鈥檚 Artist Residency at the Bruna Archives, Bellingham, USA, August 4, 2019.
  • McAllister, Kirsten, 鈥淲riting Against the Structures of Whiteness in Communication Studies: the Silencing of Racialized Subjectivities in the Disciplinary Space of Academic Texts鈥� #CommunicationsoWhite Preconference (co-organized the panel with Yasmin Jiwani and Faiza Hirji) International Association of Communication, Washington, D.C., USA, May 24, 2019.
  • McAllister, Kirsten, 鈥淭ranspacific Memories of Post-war Yokohama: the Japanese Canadian Experimental Art of Cindy Mochizuki鈥�, Invited Lecture, School of Intercultural Communication, Rikkyo University, Tokyo, April 2016.
  • McAllister, Kirsten, 鈥淔rom National To Transpacific Memoryscape: The Experimental Art of Jin-me Yoon鈥�, Invited Lecture for The Research Unit on Public Culture, University of Melbourne, March 16, 2016.
  • McAllister, Kirsten, 鈥淢oving Beyond the Extraterritorial Spaces of WWII Internment Camps: Searching the Archive for Trans-pacific Voices of Longing and Belonging鈥�, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Surabaya, Indonesia, August 2015.

 

grants

  • Social Science and Humanities Research Insight Grant, 鈥淭ranspacific Memories: Moving from the Trauma of Canada鈥檚 National Past to the Transnational Present, 2013-2016.
  • National Association of Japanese Canadians, Winnipeg, Funding for 鈥淭racing the Lines: Tracing the Lines: A Symposium on Contemporary Poetics and Cultural Politics to Honour Roy Miki鈥�, 2008.
  • Social Science and Humanities Research Standard Grant, 鈥淧ublic Discourses of Fear and Containment: Refugees in Canada and Scotland鈥�, 2006-2010.
  • Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Post-doctoral Fellowship, Institute for Cultural Research, Lancaster University, United Kingdom, 鈥淩e-presentations of Everyday Life in Internment Camps:  Hostile Environments or Familiar Landscapes?鈥�, 2000-2002.
 
 

research

  • Visual Studies 
  • Cultural Memory
  • Political violence and Racism
  • Photography, memorials, community-based art, contemporary art
  • Community-based research, ethnographic fieldwork, visual analysis
  • Asylum Seekers, Refugees, Diaspora and Migration
  • Settler-Indigenous Relations
  • Japanese Canadian and Asian Canadian Cultural Politics
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