The School of Creative Arts full-time graduate faculty are supported by a diverse group of part-time, sessional and emeriti faculty who are available to provide studio visits, sit on thesis committees, and serve as professional, artistic, and community resources.
Additionally, our Masters candidates are encouraged to seek input and support from members of the University at large. Past years have seen fruitful collaborations between our students and members of faculties including–but not limited to–Communications Studies, Architecture, Creative Writing, Music, Labour Studies, Philosophy, Sociology and Anthropology, Political Science and Women’s Studies.
BAE, Sung Min
Associate Professor, Film Production
Min Bae, Film Production Professor at the University of Windsor and Cactus Pictures® Founder, has been avidly devoted to Cinematography and Filmmaking since 1990. He has expertise and training in film production, cinematography and fine arts, a reflection of his education in Montreal, France, and Korea. Min Bae has been a collaborator on several award-winning independent films. Situation (1995), Off Sync (2000), Where are we (2004), Two Islands (2007), and the recent experimental film Qausuittuq (Summer 2020) presented/recognized in festivals worldwide.
In addition, the accomplished filmmaker continues his career as the acting writer, director, and cinematographer in the feature-length documentary film, Reset (Fall 2022), set in Seoul, Korea.
IMBD: imbd/minbae
BICK, Sally
Professor, Musicology
Sally is a professor of musicology in the School of Creative Arts. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on American musical culture particularly through the lens of politics and is most interested in how music shapes and manipulates our perceptions. In relation to this idea, she has published on film music, music in the political sphere, intellectual history and the political inclinations of modernists such as Aaron Copland, Hanns Eisler and Lenard Bernstein.
Her work has received numerous awards, including the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award (2006); Virgil Thomson Award from the Society of American Music (2015) the Music Library Association’s Dena Epstein award as well as grants from The National Endowment for the Humanities (2011-12) and The Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (in 2004-8, 2011-14, 2020-25). In recognition of her academic excellence, she was nominated as an inaugural member of Royal Society’s New College of Scholars, Artists and Scientists in Canada.
Her research appears in The Journal of the American Musicological Society, American Music, Journal of the Society for American Music, Musical Quarterly, German Studies Review, and in various book collections. She has also participated in popular forums such as the New School for Social Research’s Public Seminar, and Trax on the Trail. Sally is the author of the book Unsettled Scores: Politics, Hollywood and the Film Music of Aaron Copland and Hanns Eisler, which focuses on the Hollywood careers of Aaron Copland and Hanns Eisler and shows how their high art sensibility and political conscience were brought into direct conflict with the premier producers of America’s potent mass culture industry.
Education:
PhD and MM (Yale University)
MM (Indian University)
BMus (University of Toronto)
As a cellist, Sally performed with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Calgary Philharmonic, the Canadian Opera Company, National Ballet of Canada, and participated in studio productions that included films and commercial work in Toronto. She is currently preparing an intellectual and cultural history on the musical legacy of the New School for Social Research and its contributions to New York’s musical modernist and political culture of the 1930s.
ENGLE, Karen
Dr. Karen Engle
Professor, School of Creative Arts
Research interests: I’m a writer and researcher with an interdisciplinary background in English and Sociology. I specialize in cultural theory and visual culture, with an interest in the history of photography.
My most recent book, Chronic Conditions (2023), is a memoir exploring the affective registers of chronic pain. In 2018, Dr. Yoke-Sum Wong and I published our co-edited book, Feelings of Structure: Explorations in Affect (2018). This volume collects work by writers from multiple disciplines, each of whom explores impacts and encounters with various structures, both physical and intangible. My first book, Seeing Ghosts: 9/11 and the Visual Imagination (2009), traces historical echoes found in imagery that resonated during the initial aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks in 2001. It explores how the work of mourning was conceptualized at the national level, and how certain images were deemed unfit for purposes of commemoration while others were held up as icons of American strength.
Graduate Students: I am interested in supervising graduate students working within and across the fields of memory, affect, and contemporary art (especially photography)
Education:
PhD in Sociology, 2005 (University of Alberta)
MA, English, 1999 (University of Alberta)
BA(H), English, 1997 (Queen’s University)
HEARD, Catherine
Assistant Professor, Visual Art (Interdisciplinary Practices)
Catherine Heard Simultaneously attractive and repulsive. Catherine Heard’s works delve into primal anxieties about the body. Frequently, she uses traditional craft and historical techniques as foils for abject subject matter. Currently, she is creating a large-scale community art project, Redwork: The Emperor of Atlantis, that incorporates embroidery by participants from across Canada. Her work has been exhibited in Canada, France, Denmark, Mexico, and the US. It is in the permanent collection of the Canada Council Art Bank, The Art Gallery of Hamilton, The Art Gallery of Kamloops and The Robert McLaughlin Gallery. Catherine Heard is represented by Birch Contemporary Gallery. https://birchcontemporary.com
www.catherineheard.com
www.emperorofatlantis.com.
Instagram: freudsbride101
Sentinel (detail), 2022. Plywood, twigs, gilding, glass eyes.
HECTOR, NICK
Professor, Film Production
Nick Hector is a documentary filmmaker and educator with more than thirty-five years of experience. He has edited or produced more than 160 documentary films and programs with combined budgets of more than 100 million dollars across North & Central America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Nick’s work has been screened at most major international festivals including three of the “Big Five”: TIFF, Berlinale, and Sundance, winning 48 national and international awards. These films have been streamed or broadcast worldwide on platforms that include Criterion, Apple, Amazon, Arte, BBC, CBC, and NFB. Nick is a full member of the Directors Guild of Canada and the British Film Editors and Canadian Cinema Editors honours societies. His work includes three Top Ten Canadian films, five films at MoMA, 11 at TIFF, and 16 at HotDocs. Nick has been nominated for 36 national film awards and the winner of thirteen; including Canadian Screen, HotDocs, Directors Guild of Canada, Canadian Cinema Editors, and Gemini Awards. His creative work focuses on social justice and explores the possibilities of constructed narrative in the observational documentary. Nick holds a Doctorate in Fine Arts from the University of Hertfordshire and is perhaps best known for his work on Dying at Grace, hailed by TIFF as “one of the greatest films ever made in this country” and now part of the prestigious Criterion Collection.
Website: https://nickhector.com/
Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/nickhector
IMBD: IMDb/nickhector
KOTOWICH, J.G Bruce
Associate Professfor, Director of Choirs, Vocal Area Supervisor
Bruce J. G. Kotowich is Associate Professor of Music and Director of Choirs at the University of Windsor where he directs the University of Windsor Chamber Choir and University Singers. In addition to directing these choral ensembles, he teaches conducting. Dr. Kotowich is also the Chorus Master for the Windsor Symphony Orchestra and Artistic Director of the Windsor Classic Chorale.
Dr. Kotowich completed his Doctor of Musical Arts in Choral Conducting at the College-Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati where he also received his Master of Music degree. He received his Associateship of Music in Vocal Performance from the Royal Conservatory of Music, Toronto, and a Bachelor of Music and a Bachelor of Education from the University of Manitoba. He is a recipient of numerous awards and honours including awards from the Canada Arts Council, and the Manitoba Arts Council.
He has conducted the Manitoba Provincial Senior High Honour Choir, Manitoba Provincial Jazz Choir, the South Dakota North Region All-State Choir, the Illinois Music Educators’ Association District 8 Honor Choir and has conducted and judged numerous other festival and conference choirs. Dr. Kotowich has presented at the Iowa Choral Directors’ Association Summer Conference, the National Convention of the American Choral Directors’ Association (Dallas 2013 and Salt Lake City 2015), North Central ACDA Regional Conferences, and the NDSU Symposium: Music of the Americas. Dr. Kotowich is published in the Choral Research Memorandum Series through Chorus America, and is the editor of a choral music series for Alliance Publishing. He has toured throughout North America, Europe and China with his choirs.
LAU, Tony
Professfor, Fillm Production
Biography coming soon....
LEE, Brent
Professor, Music and Sound
Associate Dean, Research and Graduate Studies
Faculty of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences
Brent Lee is a composer, media artist, and musician whose work explores the relationships between sound, image, and technology, especially through multimedia performance. He has created more than one hundred works, ranging from orchestral music to interactive media pieces to film soundtracks. He holds degrees from McGill University and the University of British Columbia, where he completed his doctoral studies in 1999.
In addition to performances and broadcasts in many countries, several of his works have been commercially recorded. He is a co-founder of the Noiseborder Ensemble, and has been awarded significant funding for research/creation through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Ontario Arts Council.
NELSON, Kim
Professor, Cinema Arts
Director of the Humanities Research Group, Kim Nelson’s key research interests include historical consciousness and identity, methodologies of truth, and public dialogue about the past, which she has explored through audio documentary (CBC IDEAS 2023), her practice of live documentary, and written explorations in essay, chapter, and book form. Her documentary and fiction films have been screened, performed, and broadcast internationally in the US, Europe, and Canada. She has held fellowships in Germany (DAAD 2012-2013), Canada (HRG 2013-2014), and the US (NYU 2015-2016), and past and ongoing creative and research projects have received support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Canadian Ministry of Heritage. She co-edited The Routledge Companion to History and the Moving Image (2023) and authored the book Making History Move: Five Principles of the Historical Film, Rutgers University Press (2024). Nelson founded and directs the international Moving Histories Network and holds a PhD in Media Studies from the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF in Potsdam, Germany.
https://www.livedocproject.com/
Photo: Kim Nelson with design by Brodie MacPhail
PAPADOR, Nick
Associate Professor, Percussion
Nicholas Papador is a percussionist and composer based in Windsor, Ontario who specializes in contemporary music. His book project, Vessels of Song: A Collection of Klezmer Suites for Mallet Ensemble, released by Heartland Marimba Publications in 2024. He is a founding member of Noiseborder Ensemble and Marassa Duo. Papador has presented at The Space Between, Transplanted Roots Percussion Research Symposium, Puerto Rico Conservatory International Percussion Festivals, the Open Ears Festival, and the Percussive Arts Society International Convention (PASIC). His recording credits include 2022’s Marimba Collage and 2015’s Points of Departure. He was an on-screen performer in Matthew Barney’s six-hour film opera, River of Fundament. An Associate Composer with the Canadian Music Centre, his compositions appear with Heartland Marimba Publications, Keyboard Percussion Publications, Alfred Publications, Studio 4 Music, House Panther Press, and Bachovich Music. Papador has received grants from the Ontario Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, Social Sciences Humanities Research Council, and Canada Foundation for Innovation. Nicholas Papador is a Yamaha Performing Artist and an artist endorser for Vic Firth Sticks and Mallets, Sabian Cymbals, and Evans Drumheads. He holds the rank of Professor of Music at the School of Creative Arts | Music at the University of Windsor.
Papador is a graduate of Northwestern University School of Music (DM 2003), Indiana University Jacobs School of Music (MM 1999), and the University of Oregon (BMus 1997).
RODNEY, Lee
Associate Professor, Media Arts and Culture
I am an interdisciplinary writer, curator and media artist. My work focuses on practices of mapping and archiving and the ways that these mediated conventions relate to embodied experiences of place and historical memory, especially where space is contested. Since 2008, I have been involved in borderlands-related research that began with a Fulbright fellowship to study urban regions along the U.S.-Mexico border and the Canada-U.S. borders. My 2017 publication, Looking Beyond Borderlines: North America’s Frontier Imagination (Routledge Advances in Visual Studies), examines the shifting relationship between borders and frontiers in North America as they have been represented and undermined through various cultural practices. My interest in alternative cartographies has manifest in several community-based borderlands research-creation projects: The Border Bookmobile (2010-2013); Buoyant Cartographies: Alternative Mapping Practices on the Detroit River (2018-2019); Border Traces: Strata-walking the Strasbourg-Kehl Border (2023). With Dr. Michael Darroch (York University), I co-direct the InTerminus Research Group, which is currently undertaking a multi-year SSHRC project entitled “Sensing Borders: Mapping, Media and Migration.” This collaborative media arts project maps communities across the Canada-U.S. border in the Great Lakes region.
Research Interests: collaborative practices, new approaches to public spaces and contested histories, walking-related research methods.
Graduate Students: I am interested in supervising graduate students in media arts, interdisciplinary research, collaborative and performative approaches to visual and media arts practice.
Work/Publications:
https://buoyantcartographies.com
Education:
PhD in Historical and Cultural Studies, 2005 (Goldsmith’s College, University of London)
MA, Art History and Visual Culture, 1997 (York University)
BFA, Visual Arts (Intermedia), 1992 (Nova Scotia College of Art and Design)
SEOANE, José
Sessional Lecturer, Drawing & Painting
José Seoane is a painter and installation artist from Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, investigating ideas around transculturation and identity within the post modern condition. His work extends from the gallery into site-specific spaces that include interactive interventions and large-scale murals. José Seoane’s most recent series of paintings investigate the idea of the wall within the intersections of art and architecture. His earlier works focused on questions he had about the meaning of cultural themes in their development, symbolism associated with his being a medium/transporter of meaning.
STASKO, Mike
Professor, Film Production
Michael Stasko is a talented and award-winning filmmaker who has written, produced and directed seven feature films that have premiered at prestigious festivals and sold to major distributors. His films range from comedy to sci-fi, and feature stars like Ray Wise, Tom Cavanagh, Fred Willard, Graham Greene, Colin Mochrie and Kevin McDonald. He has also created and produced original TV shows for YTV and CBC. Michael Stasko is a versatile and visionary storyteller who always delivers engaging and entertaining stories for the screen. Works include "Things To Do" (2006), "Iodine" (2009), "The Brider" (2014), "The Control" (2018) and "Boys vs. Girls" (2020).
Most recently he produced the psychological thriller "Depraved Mind" (2023) with Suede Productions. His current project "Vampire Zombies...from Space!" is in advance post-production gearing up for a festival run in late-2024. He also presently producing feature length films for the Stratford Festival.
IMDb: imdb.me/mikestasko
TORINUS, Sigi
Professor, Integrated Media
Sigi Torinus creates new media works that include site-specific installation and improvisatory interactive live-video performance. Her work explores our perceptions of the migratory journey, through time and space, in physical, ephemeral and digital worlds. She holds an MFA from the Braunschweig Art Institute, Germany, and San Francisco State University in California.
Research Interests
Installation, Performance, Time Based Media, Visual Culture, Aesthetics and Sustainability
Teaching Interests
Time Based Media, Intermedia, Graduate Seminar, Critical Issues
Administrative Experience
Area Coordinator, Integrated Media
MFA Chair
Professional Activities
Selected exhibitions/performances: Sofia History Museum, Bulgaria (2017), Goethe-Institut Bulgaria (2017), Case de las Américas, Havana, Cuba (2017), KUBE Art Museum, Ålesund, Norway (2015), Laban Theatre, London, England (2015), Festival of Lights, Berlin, Germany (2014), Medienwerkstatt Berlin, Germany (2014), Art Gallery of Windsor, ON, Canada (solo show, 2014), International Video Art Festival, Camagüey, Cuba (2013), Chamberfest Ottawa, Canada (2013), Sonorities Festival, Belfast, Ireland (2013), 11th Biennial Havana: Artistic Practice and Social Imaginary, Havana, Cuba (2012), Casalmaggiore Festival, Italy (2012)
Research Projects
Noiseborder Multimedia Performance Laboratory (Co-Director), University of Windsor.
Related Links
WILLET, Jennifer
Professor, Printmaking and Bioart
Director, INCUBATOR Art Lab
Canada Research Chair in Art, Science and Ecology
Dr. Jennifer Willet is an artist, researcher, performer, and curator in the international art/science community. She is an innovator in the field of bioart, merging artistic and biotechnological research towards research/creation that uses living media (cells, plants, microbes) in the production of artworks. Willet is a Canada Research Chair in Art, Science, and Ecology, and a Professor in the School of Creative Arts at the University of Windsor and the Director of INCUBATOR Art Lab, founded in 2009. She is a member of the College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists in the Royal Society of Canada. In 2018, Willet opened a new state-of-the-art bioart laboratory, and in 2020 a storefront bioart studio and community engagement centre at the University of Windsor. https://incubatorartlab.com/
Image Credit: Justin Elliott