Dr. Peter Ives, Dr. Angela Failler, Dr. Heather Milne
WINNIPEG, MB – UWinnipeg professors Dr. Angela Failler (Women’s and Gender Studies), Dr. Peter Ives (Politics), and Dr. Heather Milne (English) have co-edited a special double issue of Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, titled Caring for Difficult Knowledge: Prospects for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. Nine of the contributors are scholars from UWinnipeg.
“Our proximity to the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) has provided opportunities to be in direct dialogue with curatorial, research and education staff from the CMHR, and to observe how local communities and debates are influencing and being influenced by the museum. We aim with this publication to contribute to the potential for the CMHR to serve as a meaningful site for pedagogical encounter, cultural production and public exchange,” says Failler.
Canadian Museum of Human Rights
The double issue includes seven peer-reviewed articles on topics ranging from the impact of the museum’s architecture on the capacity for visitors to learn from difficult knowledge, to the museum’s treatment (or lackthereof) of the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous Women. There are also five shorter pieces written by some of UWinnipeg’s Cultural Studies Research Group (CSRG) key interlocutors, extending a critical understanding of the museum.
“Each contributor brings a very distinct perspective to the question of what it might mean to ‘care for difficult knowledge’ in relation to museum practices,” Milne points out. “The fact that the authors represent a range of disciplinary backgrounds is also one of the many strengths of this collection.”
Ives adds, “As a whole the collection understands the CMHR not merely as a destination-event, but as a chance to explore a diverse set of issues that extend beyond the museum itself, encapsulating local and national questions and their interconnection with more global dynamics including how human rights discourses relate to genocide, colonialism, neoliberalism, capitalism, and equality, plus questions of national narrative and more general issues of social justice, representation, and public space.”
The editors expect to have a public launch for the issue in Fall 2015. This issue can now be accessed at Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies.
