Welcome Introductions

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Feature Film

Miss Navajo

Content Warning: This film includes scenes of Diné customary practices including sheep butchering which is part of the Miss Navajo Nation competition at 32:43-35:47.

Director: Billy Luther (Diné)
2007 | 60 minutes

For the past 50 years, the Miss Navajo Nation pageant has celebrated Navajo women and traditional values, language, and inner beauty. Held over a five-day period at the annual Navajo Nation Fair, contestants are required to showcase skills that are crucial to Navajo daily life, including sheep butchering, fry-bread making and rug weaving. Through interviews with new and previous pageant contestants, Miss Navajo reveals the importance of cultural preservation and the meaning of being a woman in Navajo culture.

https://itvs.org/films/miss-navajo

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Short Films

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Now is the Time

Director: Christopher Auchter (Haida)
2019 | 16 min

When internationally renowned Haida carver Robert Davidson was only 22 years old, he carved the first new totem pole on British Columbia’s Haida Gwaii in almost a century. On the 50th anniversary of the pole’s raising, Haida filmmaker Christopher Auchter steps easily through history to revisit that day in August 1969, when the entire village of Old Massett gathered to celebrate the event that would signal the rebirth of the Haida spirit.

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https://www.nfb.ca/film/now-is-the-time/

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Mareikura

Directors: Alika Maikau (Kanaka Maoli), Tristin Greyeyes (Cree), and Tihini Grant (Māori)

2019 | 7 min

In keeping with her family tradition, a young Māori girl is unduly pressured by her father to receive her moko kauae (chin tattoo). She is the last in her nana’s lineage. As she wrestles with her doubt and the weight of her responsibility, she questions the impact of her decision to uphold their family’s legacy.

http://www.steambox.co.nz/native-slam-shorts.html

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Thirza Cuthand Is An Indian Within the Meaning of the Indian Act

Director: Thirza Cuthand (Plains Cree)
2017 | 9 min

Contemplating mixed race identity in Canada, Cuthand presents us with images of blood ties and land ties for indigenous people, and questions the use of the words “white passing” and “light skinned.” As a light skinned indigenous woman, Cuthand reiterates that racism and discrimination still happen for her, just in different ways. Community belonging is contrasted with the difference experiences she has from her darker skinned family. Ultimately, a video with more questions than answers, it situates the artist’s body in historical trauma and ongoing colonial survival.

https://www.vtape.org/video?vi=8806

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Four Faces of the Moon

Director: Amanda Strong (Michif)
2017 | 13 min

Four Faces of the Moon follows the animated journey of an Indigenous photographer as she travels through time. She witnesses moments in her family’s history and strengthens her connection to her Métis, Cree and Anishnaabe ancestors. This is a personal story, told in four chapters through the eyes of director and writer Amanda Strong. The oral and written history of her family reveals the story — we witness the impact and legacy of the railways, the slaughter of the buffalo and colonial land policies. The film contains no English language, relying on sound, image and Indigenous voices to tell the story.

This multi-layered approach to storytelling may leave you with more questions than answers: it is an invitation to look into your own understanding of history, legacy and the importance in knowing who you are and where you come from.

https://www.spottedfawnproductions.com/four-faces-of-the-moon

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This Is Who I Am

Director: Manuel Ibanez (Quechua)
Producer: Kalvin Hartwig (Bear Clan Anishinaabe)

2018 | 11 min

A young First Nations woman struggles with her identity in the big city. After a series of events, she realizes she can still be Anishinaabe, and in fact, it is her responsibility.
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https://www.nfb.ca/film/this_is_who_i_am/

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Return

The Department of Art History is pleased to welcome Dr. Erika Loic as Assistant Professor of Global Medieval Art this fall. Dr. Loic specialize in global medieval art history, manuscript illumination, and the Iberian Peninsula. She is especially interested in materiality and the effects of translating word and image across media, not only historically, but also in digital humanities initiatives.

Before joining Florida State University in 2020, Dr. Loic held the Postdoctoral Fellowship in Medieval Art and Digital Humanities in the Department of Visual Studies at the University of Toronto Mississauga. In this role, she helped develop web-based teaching and research tools to support a new textbook (Jill Caskey, Adam S. Cohen, and Linda Safran, Art and Architecture of the Middle Ages: Exploring a Connected World, forthcoming from Cornell University Press).

In addition to her training in art history, Dr. Loic’s formal education has included film studies, communications, and cultural studies. After attending a practice-based film school in Toronto, she completed a Master’s degree with a focus on experimental animation and abstraction in 16mm film. Dr. Loic’s background in filmmaking and film studies informs much of her current work on the art of the book, from the earliest codices to more recent experiments in sculptural, projection-based, and digital artists’ books.

Dr. Loic is currently preparing a monograph on the eleventh-century Ripoll and Roda Bibles, which were produced at the monastery of Santa Maria de Ripoll in the Marca Hispanica (Catalonia). She is also they editor, with Elsa De Luca and Alicia Miguélez Cavero, of an upcoming special issue of the Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies: “Connecting the Dots: New Research Paradigms for Iberian Manuscripts as Material Objects” (forthcoming 2022). Her scholarship has been supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Burlington Magazine Foundation, Francis Haskell Memorial Fund, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (Santiago Cathedral Project).