Recent Blog for UTP Here
Jenn on Public Energy’s Rewind Room here
Jenn Talking About Early Experiences of Performance here
Jenn’s Peterborough Poetry Slam’s Instagram Takeover below (this one’s for the small town teenagers)
Thrilled to be Part of enawendewin/relationships at McMaster Museum of Art curated by William Kingfisher Have a Look!
To See Images of Jenn Cole’s Work, Click Here
Gatherings: Archival and Oral Histories of Performance
Aging Activisms
ArtsBuild Ontario Indigenous Creative Spaces Project
Swim!
Jenn Cole is a mixed-ancestry Algonquin Anishinaabe-kwe and Assistant Professor in Gender and Women’s Studies at Trent University. She researches Indigenous Performance as it intersects with settler/Indigenous relations and reciprocal relationship to the land, especially at the site of the Kiji Sibi/Ottawa River in Algonquin Territory. She is Associate Artistic Producer and Director of Nozhem First Peoples Performance Space and editor for Views and Reviews for Canadian Theatre Review.
Her older work focuses on the cultural history of hysteria and the hysterics’ modes of resistance to misogynist medical spectacle. Book coming soon! Her other published writing is about the political force of inarticulacy, the activist elements of intimacy created by imperfect storytelling, Indigenous feminist methodologies and feminist performance adaptations. Her current performance practice explores storytelling, autobiography and sharing food together as an expression of vulnerability and relational exchange that is pivotal as we try to cultivate a sense of who we are in relation.
In programming, curation, publication, public talks, teaching and performance, she works to create experiences that enable participants across generations to decolonize their relationships to place and one another through multi-arts practices. She is Creative Director of the Aging Activisms Research Collective; Co-Investigator in the SSHRC-funded partnership development project, Gatherings: Archival and Oral Histories of Canadian Performance; Co-Conveynor of the Indigenous Performance Research in the Americas Working Group for the American Society for Theatre Research; and editor of Gatherings, a publication for the collection and distribution of creative scholarly work in performance. She has conducted arts, workshop and performance scholarship programming for events like Precarious Festival, the national Canadian Association for Theatre Research conferences (2017, 2018); Stories of Resistance, Resurgence and Resilience in Nogojiwanong/Peterborough: Aging Activisms Intergenerational Storytelling Workshops (2018); Impossible Projects Symposia (2016, 2018); The Future of Cage: Credo conference (2012) and Polyphony (2005-7).
Select publications include:
Cole, J. (2020) Hysteria in Performance. McGill Queens UP; (Forthcoming) Cole, J. with Ziysah Von Beiberstein and William Kingfisher (2020) Hidden Anatomy/ Tactile Community. O! Underworld Press; (Forthcoming) Cole, J. (2020) “Lament for Confederation, Chief Dan George [Geswanoth Slahoot]: Assertions of Sovereignty” in Canadian Plays and Performance Documents and Debates: A Sourcebook. U Alberta Press;(Forthcoming) Nozhem: Bear Space Virtual Exhibition of the story of Nozhem First Peoples Performance Space with oral histories by Marrie Mumford, Elder Edna Manitowabi, Elder Shirley Williams, and Daystar Rosalie Jones; Cole, J. (2020) “Performing Lumberjacks, Performing Waters” in Theatre Documentation and Reconstruction Project. Online; (Forthcoming) Cole, J. (2020) “Editorial: Negotiating Encounters: Embodiments and Edges” in Canadian Theatre Review: Views and Reviews 184; Cole J. And Chazan, M. (2020) “Making Sovereign Memory, Making Memory Sovereign” in Memory Studies; Cole, J. (2020) “Shanty Songs and Echoing Rocks: Upsurges of Memory Along Fault Lines of Extraction” in Canadian Theatre Review 180; Cole, J. (2020) “Stepdancing the asinig (rocks) with pierogies,” in Poems for Reading: Five Poets, One Reader, ed. Dale Tracy. Also published on periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics, ed. Rob Mclennan;; Cole, J. (2019) “You are Enough: Love Poems for the End of the World: Review” in Muskrat Magazine; Cole, J. (2019) “Review of Julie Burelle’s Encounters on Contested Lands” in Theatre Annual; Cole, J. (2018) “Relinquishing Expertise: Notes on Indigenous Feminist Performance Methodologies” in Canadian Theatre Review 178; Cole, J. (2018) “Following Nan to the Kiji Sibi” in Unsettling Activisms. Critical Interventions on Aging, Gender, and Social Change,Eds. Melissa Baldwin, May Chazan and Pat Evans. Toronto: Women’s Press/Canadian Scholars Press; Cole, J. (2018) “I am Dancing with the Ancestors and there is Joy in it,” in Feminist Space Camp ed. Tita Kyrtsakas and Jess Watkin: online; Cole, J. (2018) “Be Changed and then Don’t Stop: What 2894 Can Do” on 2894.ca; Cole, J. (2017) “Horrific Flesh, Holy Theatre” in Invisible Cultures 27; Cole, J. (2017) “Gatherings Manifesto: A Call to Performance Writers and Makers” in Gatherings. Ed Jenn Cole. Jackson’s Creek Press; Cole, J. (2015) “Good Dirt: A Performance Reflection” in Hysteria: Hysterical Feminisms:UK. Online and in print. Co-authored with Gina Brintnell and Myrto Koumarianos ; and Cole, J. (2012) “Danger Music: On the Intimacy of Screaming” inToronto Review of Books; Chirograph.
Select public talks include:
Storying Indigenous Futures Through Dance and Film: Researching Red Card with Cara Mumford, Canadian Indigenous/Native Studies Association For the Seventh Generation Imagining and Creating Indigenous Futures (2020); “The Stories we Tell,” Enwayaang: The Way We Sound Together student-nominated talk, Trent University (2020); “Jiimaan, that Teaching Sister,” Seeley Women in Leadership Luncheon, Lady Eaton College, Trent University (2020); “Artist Talkback: Chemical Valley Project” Moderated Talk with Broadleaf Theatre, Public Energy (2020); “Restorying Place as Indigenous Feminist Methodology” Graduate Foundations in Gender and Feminist Studies: Discovering Feminist, Decolonial Research, Trent University (2020); “Why We Make This Work, Here, Now” Precarious Festival, with Jill Carter (Anishinaabe/Ashkenazi), Olivia Whetung (Michi Saagig), and Jon Lockyear, Artspace (2019); “Enawendewin: Artist Talk” with William Kingfisher, Kerry Beebee and Dave Deleary (also Lisa Myers and Anong Beam), Artspace (2019); Opening Keynote Plenary “What Can Critical Decolonial Community Based Storytelling Research Offer Aging Studies?,” North American Network of Aging Studies and European Network of Aging Studies (2019); “Manifesting Resistance, Reconceptualizing Archive: Indigenous Memory Practices,” Women’s and Gender Studies and Recherches Feministes (2019); “Methodology Is Hot Gluing Seed Beads into Nan’s Broken Necklace,” Graduate Foundations in Gender and Feminist Studies: Discovering Feminist, Decolonial Research, Trent University (2018); “My Performance as Research Practice: How Screaming, Trying to Fit Myself into a Teapot, and Drawing with Strangers Has Shifted my Knowledge Practice,” U of T PhD Seminar in Performance Research Methods (2017); “Creative Work for Social Change with Kwe in Nogojiwanong: A Conversation with Hilary Wear and Mindy Knott,” Impossible Projects Symposium (2018); “River as Archive, River as Witness: Spectacle and Ceremony in Mìwàte at Chaudière Falls,” Canadian Association for Theatre Research Performance History Working Group (2018); and “Sarah de Carlo, Images and Processes: A Public Interview” Intersections Series, Trent University
Select Performances include:
Necessary Gestures Movement film with Cara Mumford, William Kingfisher, Bennett Bedoukian, Kerry Beebee (2020); Jiimaan Alternating Currents (2020); Alternating Currents Dancer and dramaturgical devisor with movement explorations around Plains American Indian Sign Language as choreography for Cara Mumford film, dramaturgical lead by Kate Story (2019); Shapeshifter: Red Card Dance/Film Research Layer Dancer/dramaturgical collaborator for Cara Mumford (2019); “Gitigaan: Dances for Gardens,” “The Sound Seeds Make” William Kingfisher’s Gitigaan/Enewendewin project and Artspace’s InSites Festival (2019); 2019-2021 “Jimaan,” How to approach a Canoe dance exploration series (2019-21); “Traplines,” Small Dance for Small Spaces Festival (2019); Dumoine River Art for Wilderness Residency, CPAWS-OV (2018); “Walking Our Way Here,” Canadian Association for Theatre Research Conference (2018); “Following Nan to the Kiji Sibi Part II,” Manifesting Resistance (2018); “Listening to Kashtin with my Mom,” Gatherings and Unsettling Activisms book launches; Alternating Currents Program Artist, Public Energy (2017); “Tracing Nan: A Trans-Generational Map Home,” American Society for Theatre Research, Minneapolis Marriott (2016); and “Espionage/Clairvoyance: Traipsing the Memories of Transformative Teenage Witnessing,” Capital Wayfaring: Peripatetic Explorations (2015).
She recently teaches Intro courses in Gender Studies; Gender, Race and Class; Feminist Psychologies; Sex, Gender, Science; Decolonizing Feminisms; and an Advanced Feminist Research Seminar with emphasis in Indigenous Feminist/Two-Spirit Artistic Activisms . She is passionate about teaching performance and creative expression as research and scholarship practices and loves when students get out of their seats and onto the Land. Her research interests include: Indigenous Feminist artistic activisms; the performance history of the Kiji Sibi; what rivers remember; the force of inarticulacy; hysteria; feminist performance; autobiography as counter-narrative and theatres of resistance. She received her PhD from the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Toronto funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Ontario and Ontario Graduate Scholarships. She is recent recipient of the Vice President’s Research Initiatives Grant; was twice a recipient of the Metl-Trebbin-DeBoni Endowment Award and conducted research at the Bibliothèque Charcot in Paris with support from the Canadian Association for Theatre Research’s Heather McCallum Scholarship. Her PhD thesis, Hysteria in/as Performance Potential Dramaturgies Toward Portraits of Ambiguity won the Clifford Leech prize for best thesis in English and Drama at U of T in 2016. She also received the Harcourt-Brown Research Fellowship in 2017 and an Alternating Currents Dramaturgy Residency with Public Energy. She is co-founder of the Impossible Projects Working Group out of Clarkson University, co-convenor of the Indigenous Performance Research working group for ASTR, is on the Aging Activisms Research Collective steering committee and has been Project Manager for the University of Toronto’s Theatre Documentation and Research Project for which she is now a research co-investogator as part of a SSHRC funded partnership development grant. She is also a movement, dance, dramaturgy and installation art practitioner, having worked with Zach Running Coyote; Cara Mumford; William Kingfisher; Bennett Bedoukian; Manifesting Resistance; Ars Mechanica; Toronto Laboratory Theatre; Circadia Ingidena; Kaeja d’Dance; Stand Up Dance; Fleshy Thud Dance Collective and Public Energy dance initiatives.
Jenn Cole 