Joan Greer

JOAN E. GREER

Joan E. Greer, PhD Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam (Professor, University of Alberta), teaches the History of Art, Design, and Visual Culture. Her research engages with issues of artistic identity, landscape art, the history of environmentalism, and theories of nature and ecological envisioning, both historically (most particularly in the long nineteenth century) and in contemporary art and design, with a special interest in The Netherlands and Belgium. Her ongoing major research project is entitled “Visualizations of Nature in Nineteenth-Century Dutch Print Culture: Religion, Science, Art”. For this work, as well as her Research Creation projects, she has developed theories of Ecological Envisioning and of Compostual Thinking. These pursuits overlap with investigations of historical and contemporary representations of pollination and insect ecologies.

Keywords: Multispecies Studies; Pluriverse; Sustainability; Activist Art and Design

Greer is a member of three national and international collaborative research-creation projects; a founding member of the University of Alberta Faculty of Arts/ALES Environmental Studies (ES) Programme; an ongoing member of the U of A Science and Technology in Society (STS), and Religious Studies (RS) interdisciplinary programmes; and a member of the leadership team in the U of A Faculty of Arts Mediating Science and Technology Signature Area.

Recent Research

Publications:
“An Insect’s-Eye View: Theo van Hoytema and the Art of Pollination”, special issue, “The Animal and the Human in Netherlandish Art”, in Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek (NKJ)/Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art, vol. 71 2021 (in press); “Visualizations of ‘Nature’: Entomology and Ecological Envisioning in the Art of Willem Roelofs and Vincent van Gogh”, Maura Coughlin and Emily Gephart, eds., Eco-critical approaches to 19th century art, Routledge (2019); “'To everything there is a season': the rhythms of the year in Vincent van Gogh’s socio-religious world view”, Van Gogh and the Seasons, ed. Sjraar van Heugten, (exhibition catalogue, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2017) republished by Princeton University Press, 2018; Printmaking in the Anthropocene …, Edmonton, 2018 (https://www.justpowers.ca/app/uploads/Printmaking-in-the-Anthropocene-LOWRES.pdf).

Research Creation: “Seed Time: Sister Plantings for Regenerative Futures”, Intermedia Installation by Joan Greer, Sourayan Mookerjea, Tegan Moore; Designer: Sergio Serrano, in Prototypes for Possible Worlds exhibition, Speculative Energy Futures Project, FAB Gallery, University of Alberta Dec 10, 2019-Jan 11, 2020; “Inverse Insulations in a Seed Time Poem Cycle” (Video), a COVID Pivot iteration of “Seed Time, Dyscorpia Exhibition, COVID Pivot online version, curated by Marilène Oliver, summer 2020.

Our Partners

E M B A S S Y C U L T U R A L H O U S E . C A

The Embassy Cultural House (ECH) is located on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak, and Chonnonton peoples, at the forks of Deshkan Ziibi (Antler River), an area subject to the Dish with One Spoon Covenant Wampum and other treaties, colonized as London, Ontario. The ECH strives to create meaningful relationships between the Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island and our contributors. The ECH honours the stewardship of the many Indigenous peoples who have resided on these lands since time immemorial.