Visiting Scholar-in-Residence Program

2024/25

 

Dr. Stefan Honisch

Dr.  Honisch is currently an Honorary Research Associate and Sessional Lecturer in the Department of Theatre and Film at the University of British Columbia, having held a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship in the department from 2019 to 2021. He is Co-Director of the SSHRC Race, Gender and Diversity Initiative grant, “Facilitating Anti-Ableist Remote Music Making,” and Co-Applicant for the SSHRC Partnership Development Grant, “Canadian Accessible Musical Instruments Network.” He has contributed peer-reviewed articles to Journal of Inclusive Education, Journal of Interdisciplinary Voice Studies, Journal of Teaching Disability Studies, and Music Theory Online, in addition to chapters for The Oxford Handbook of Music and Disability Studies, and The Oxford Handbook of Music and the Body, among other publications. Work in progress includes a monograph under contract with University of Michigan Press, book chapters for two edited volumes on music performance, and an article on disability and dramaturgy for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Disability Studies. 

Research in focus: Stefan Sunandan Honisch | UBC Today

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Ms. Margaretta James

St. John’s College is honoured to welcome Ms. Margaretta James as the College Visiting Scholar-in-Residence for 2023-2025.

Biography

A mother, grandmother and great grandmother of Filipino and Stl’atl’imx roots, Margaretta James has lived with the Mowachaht/Muchalaht nation of the Nuu-chah-nulth people for the past several decades in Yuquot (colonially known as Friendly Cove or Nootka Sound). Margaretta’s community work includes Indigenous education, heritage preservation and cultural interpretation. She formerly served as Band Manager for the Mowachaht Band Council, and as the President of the Land of Maquinna Cultural Society for over twenty years; her work has included Canadian historic site awareness, repatriation and global cultural tourism.  In addition, she also has been working on the Yuquot Centennial 2023, Summer Youth tour training program, the community garden and advocating for Elder and intergenerational community wellness.

While Ms. James continues to reside at Tsaxana on British Columbia’s West Coast, she is currently enrolled in the Master’s program with the Institute of Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice at UBC, which will focus on bringing together Margaretta’s existing and ongoing body of work with academic study to explore the relationship between Indigeneity and Asian Migrations to the west coast of North America.  Ms. James will be staying at the College several times a month during her studies.

Teaser clip on Margaretta’s Story and Yuquot (longer length short film to come!)

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Published:

 “My Transpacific Life” has appeared in Unsettling the Islands: Race, Indigeneity and the Transpacific. Special Issue of BC Studies 204 (Winter 2019/2020): 139-150.

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Margaretta is involved in current talks to repatriate the Yuquot Whalers’ Shrine that is in possession of the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Yuquot Whalers’ Shrine

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Mr. Jordan Wilson

We welcome Jordan Wilson as a College Johannean Visiting Scholar-in-Residence for 2024/25 and are looking forward to him engaging with our community in the upcoming months.

Jordan Wilson is a curator and scholar and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology at New York University. He is a member of the Musqueam First Nation, in what is now Vancouver, British Columbia, and holds an MA in Anthropology and a BA in Indigenous Studies, both obtained at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Prior to starting graduate studies, Wilson was a Curatorial Intern at UBC’s Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery (2017-2018), where he contributed to the exhibition Beginning with the Seventies: Collective Acts (2018). Wilson’s current research examines the politics of Indigenous language revitalization, the legacies of anthropological collecting, the practices of collecting institutions, as well as questions concerning Indigenous sovereignty and settler colonialism. His curatorial practice often involves considering the forms of relationships contemporary Indigenous peoples maintain with their ancestral art, material culture, and immaterial heritage currently held by colonial institutions, and the potential of Indigenous art in the public realm. This work is informed by desires for structural change in institutions with regard to Indigenous representation and engagement, as well as a commitment to the well-being of his home community. Wilson was a co-curator of c̓əsnaʔəm, the city before the city (2015), an exhibition developed collaboratively with Musqueam; and the long-term exhibition In a Different Light: Reflecting on Northwest Coast Art (2017) at the UBC Museum of Anthropology. His writing has appeared in Inuit Art Quarterly, The Capilano Review, Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly, and Museum Worlds. He is also a writer and co-editor of Where the Power Is: Indigenous Perspectives on Northwest Coast Art (2021).

Resources:

Walking tour of Musqueam house posts by Jordan Wilson

• Digital guide available online
• Hard copy guides are available at the Belkin Art Gallery

Challenging Ideology Looking at Historical Museum Practices Through an Indigenous Lens – This series provides input into what it means to “decolonize museums” from an academic and museum perspective.

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In a Different Light – Join MOA curator Karen Duffek and Musqueam guest curator Jordan Wilson as they discuss the ideas behind In a Different Light: Reflecting on Northwest Coast Art.