GSFS Advising 

Participant Bios | Bios des participants

Trish Salah
Queen’s University

Born in Halifax, Trish Salah is a poet, activist and assistant professor in the Department of Gender Studies at Queen's University. Her first collection of poetry, Wanting in Arabic, is chiefly concerned with diasporic Arab, transgender and queer subjectivities and the social, rhetorical and desiring labour of minority community formation in contexts of erasure and violent othering. First published in 2002 by TSAR, Wanting in Arabic was published in a new, expanded edition in 2013, which won the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction. Her second book, Lyric Sexology Vol. 1 (Roof 2014, Metonymy 2017) employs the lyric as lens to read the intersection of transgender and eugenic fantasies encoded in feminist, autobiographical, anthropological, sexological and psychoanalytic archives.

Trish Salah is a member of the editorial boards of TSQ, Eoagh and Topia. and the co-editor of a special issue of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, on Transgender Cultural Production. Her research program, Towards a Trans Minor Literature, is an inquiry into aesthetic and political projects of transsexual, trans, genderqueer and two-spirit writers.  While teaching at the University of Winnipeg she co-organized two conferences, Writing Trans Genres: Emergent Literatures & Criticism, and Decolonizing and Decriminalizing Trans Genres. 

Her writing is available in current and recent issues of Angelaki, Anomaly, The Capilano Review, Somatechnics, Supplement, TSQ, and Vetch: A magazine of Trans Poetry and Poetics. You can find her on twitter @anasemia.

 

JJ Levine
Artist

JJ Levine is a Montreal-based artist working in intimate portraiture. Most know for his series Queer Portraits, Alone Time, and Switch, Levine's photography explores gender, sexuality, self-identity, and queer space. Levine holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography and Interdisciplinary Studies in Sexuality, and is currently pursuing a Masters in Fine Arts at Concordia University. Levine has been honoured with several portfolio awards and received grants from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the Canada Council for the Arts. Levine’s work has been exhibited at galleries, art festivals, and academic conferences across Canada, the United States, and Europe. As well, Levine has guest lectured for Communications and Photography courses at Concordia University and Ottawa U and has been published in the academic journal, Photography and Culture (UK). His work has also been featured in art magazines and newspapers internationally, including Esse, CV Photo, Slate magazine, and The Guardian Observer. Levine's artistic practice balances radical gender politics with a strong formal aesthetic.

 

syrus marcus ware
Artist

Syrus is a Vanier Scholar, visual artist, activist, curator and educator. Syrus uses painting, installation and performance to explore social justice frameworks and black activist culture. His work has been shown widely, including at the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery,  Art Gallery of York University and The Gladstone Hotel. His performance works have been part of festivals across Canada, including at Cripping The Stage (Harbourfront Centre, 2016), Complex Social Change (University of Lethbridge Art Gallery, 2015) and Decolonizing and Decriminalizing Trans Genres (University of Winnipeg, 2015).  He is part of the PDA (Performance Disability Art) Collective and co-programmed Crip Your World: An Intergalactic Queer/POC Sick and Disabled Extravaganza as part of Mayworks 2014. He is also a part of the Black Triangle Arts Collective (BTAC), a visual arts collective dedicated to exploring disability, racial and economic justice. Syrus' recent curatorial projects include That’s So Gay: Uprising, That’s So Gay: On the Edge, TSG: Fall to Pieces, TSG: Come Together (Gladstone Hotel, 2017, 2016, 2015 & 2014), Re:Purpose (Robert McLaughlin Gallery, 2014) and The Church Street Mural Project (Church-Wellesley Village, 2013). Syrus is also co-curator of The Cycle, a two-year disability arts performance initiative of the National Arts Centre.

 

Kama La Mackerel
Artist

Kama La Mackerel is a tio’tia:ke/Montreal-based performer, writer, poet, story-teller, curator and multi-disciplinary artist whose work explores aesthetic practices as forms of resistance and/or healing for marginalized communities. Using photography, ​poetry​, textiles, performance and digital arts, Kama's work is both deeply personal and political, articulating an anti-colonial praxis through cultural production. Kama is the co-founder of Qouleur, an annual arts festival and healing space by and for queer and trans artists of colour, and the founder & hostess of GENDER B(L)ENDER, Montréal’s monthly queer open stage. Kama was born in Mauritius, immigrated to India as a young adult, and has been living in tio’tia:ke/Montréal since 2012. Kama recently launched Our Bodies, Our Stories, an arts and performance training and mentorship program for queer and trans youth of colour aged 16-24, and she is also working on her new one-woman spoken-word show, Zom-Fam.

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Kama La Mackerel est écrivaine, poétesse, conteuse, commissaire et artiste pluridisciplinaire, basée à tio’tia:ke/Montréal. Son travail explore les pratiques esthétiques comme formes de résistance et/ou de guérison (“healing”) pour les communautés marginalisées. Utilisant la photographie, la poésie, les textiles, la performance et les arts numériques, le travail de Kama est à la fois profondément personnel et politique, articulant une pratique anti-coloniale à travers la production culturelle. Kama est la cofondatrice de Qouleur, un festival annuel d’arts et un espace communautaire pour les personnes queer et trans racisées, et elle est la fondatrice et l’animatrice de GENDER B(L)ENDER, le cabaret open-mic queer de Montréal. Kama est née à l'île Maurice et elle a d’abord émigré en Inde avant de s’installer à tio’tia:ke/Montréal en 2012. Kama a récemment lancé Nos Corps, Nos Histoires, un programme de formations et mentorat en arts et performance pour jeunes personnes queer et trans racisées de 16-24 ans. Kama travaille aussi sur son one-woman show de spoken word, Zom-Fam.

 

Alexandre Baril
University of Ottawa

Alexandre Baril, Ph.D. in Women’s Studies, is an Assistant Professor at the School of Social Work at the University of Ottawa, specializing in diversity, including sexual, gender, (dis)ability, and linguistic diversity. Alexandre Baril’s interdisciplinary training combines ten years in philosophy/ethics, a Ph.D. in Women’s Studies and two postdoctoral fellowships in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Wesleyan University (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council/SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship), and in Political Science at Dalhousie University (Izaak Walton Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship). He has published articles in journals such as Hypatia: Journal of Feminist Philosophy; Feminist Review; TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly; Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice; Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies; Annual Review of Critical Psychology; Medicine Anthropology Theory; Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies; Canadian Journal of Disability Studies; Disability & Society; Recherches féministes; Enfances, familles, générations: Revue interdisciplinaire sur la famille contemporaine; and Recherches sociologiques & anthropologiques. His intersectional research places gender, feminist, queer, trans, and disability/crip studies in dialogue with the sociology of the body, health and social movements.

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Alexandre Baril, Ph.D. en études des femmes, est professeur adjoint à l’École de service social de l’Université d’Ottawa et spécialiste de la diversité, incluant la diversité sexuelle et de genre, corporelle (handicaps et santé) et linguistique. La formation interdisciplinaire d’Alexandre Baril combine dix années en philosophie/éthique, un doctorat en études des femmes, ainsi que deux stages postdoctoraux en études féministes, de genre et des sexualités à Wesleyan University (Bourse postdoctorale du Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines du Canada/CRSH) et en science politique à Dalhousie University (Bourse postdoctorale Izaak Walton Killam). Il a publié plusieurs articles dans des revues telles que Hypatia: Journal of Feminist Philosophy; Feminist Review; TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly; Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice; Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies; Annual Review of Critical Psychology; Medicine Anthropology Theory; Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies; Canadian Journal of Disability Studies; Disability & Society; Recherches féministes; Enfances, familles, générations: Revue interdisciplinaire sur la famille contemporaine; et Recherches sociologiques & anthropologiques. Ses recherches intersectionnelles se situent à la croisée des études féministes et de genre, queers, trans, du handicap et de la sociologie du corps, de la santé et des mouvements sociaux.

 

Lindsay Nixon
Artist

Lindsay Nixon is a Cree-Métis-Saulteaux curator, editor, award-nominated writer and art history grad student. They currently hold the position of Indigenous Editor at Large for Canadian Art, and are the editor of mâmawi­-âcimowak, an independent art, art criticism and literature journal. Nixon’s writing has appeared in Malahat Review, Room, GUTS, Mice, esse, The Inuit Art Quarterly and other publications. Their forthcoming creative non-fiction collection, tentatively titled nîtisânak, is to be released in spring 2018 through Metonymy Press.

 

Ellise Barbara
Artist

Ellise Barbara is a Montreal-based avant-garde artist, singer, song selector, curator, and pinup whose musical output combines elements of brazen 80s funk, late 70s underground, and downtown no wave. A lover of the odd, dark, and overlooked elements in pop music, they find inspiration in unexpected sources, like off-the-radar acts Su Tissue and Francis Bebey. Rising from artist-run spaces such as La Briqueand Drones Club at the turn of the current decade, Ellise Barbara has seen their work soar to enduring acclaim in Japan and Europe, in a short career whose highlights include duets with Laetitia Sadier and R. Stevie Moore. Barbara's recent efforts are partly centered around LGBTQ+ community organizing. They're working on new music with their band the Black Space, whose lineup is solely made of musicians of Sub-Saharan African descent and mission is centered around the theme of blackness and the rejection of modern racialized tropes.

 

Fallon Andy 
Artist 

Fallon Simard is an Anishinaabe artist and filmmaker from Couchiching First Nation, in Treaty #3 Territory. Their work examines state violence perpetrated on to Indigenous bodies within a context of colonialism. Their work looks at intersections of land, extraction, mental health, and violence. 

 

Lucas Charlie Rose
Artist 

Lucas Charlie Rose is a black trans-masculine hip-hop artist, founder of Trans Trenderz, a non-profit record label for trans artists responsible for the release of the world's first ever all trans hip hop mixtape. 

 

Maxime Faddoul 
UQAM 

Maxime Faddoul est le cofondateur de la marche trans à Montréal et participe à diverses initiatives militantes et communautaires sur les questions LGBTQ+. Il travaille comme coordonnateur de recherche pour un projet de recherche sur les jeunes trans et il réalise présentement son mémoire en travail social à l’UQAM intitulé Articulation des questions trans en travail social : pratiques et points de vue des intervenant.e.s sociaux, sous la direction de Maria Nengeh Mensah.  

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Maxime Faddoul is the co-founder of theMontreal trans march and takes an active role within activist and community initiatives on LGBTQ + issues. He is a research coordinator for a research project on trans youth and is currently writing his thesis in social work at UQAM titled Articulation des questions trans en travail social : pratiques et points de vue des intervenant.e.s sociaux, under the heading direction of Maria Nengeh Mensah. 

 

Dr. Eliza Steinbock
Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society  

Dr. Eliza Steinbock is an Assistant Professor of Film and Literary Studies at Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society, and former “Veni” Talent Scheme postdoctoral researcher awarded by The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research for “Vital Art: Transgender Portraiture as Visual Activism” (2014-2018). Their forthcoming first book, Shimmering Images: Trans Cinema, Embodiment and the Aesthetics of Change, is with Duke UP (Winter 2018). www.elizasteinbock.com

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