BIO

Angela Carr is an Associate Professor of Art History in the School for Studies in Art and Culture at Carleton University in Ottawa.  She is the author of Edmund Burke: Redefining Canadian Architecture, published by McGill-Queen’s University Press, in 1995. This book received an Award of Merit from the Toronto Historical Board and a J J Talman Award honorable mention, from the Ontario Historical Society. Professor Carr has published scholarly articles in the Journal of Canadian Art History, Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada Bulletin, Architecture and Ideas, and a variety of other journals. She supervises MA students in Art History: Art & its Institutions, as well as in Cultural Mediations and the School of Canadian Studies.Her areas of specialization include historical Canadian art and architecture, methodological approaches to architectural history, and issues of identity. Professor Carr holds five university degrees including a JD (LLB) (Osgoode Hall Law School, 1975) and a PhD (University of Toronto, 1990). Her work has been supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. She is currently working on a book dealing Toronto’s Osgoode Hall and its relation to the city. In terms of her professional associations Professor Carr has presented papers at conferences of the College Art Association, the Society of Architectural Historians, the Universities Art Association of Canada, and the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada.. She has also delivered a number of invited lectures, including one on the work of architect Edmund Burke, to the Toronto Historical Board, and another on the contribution of architect and educator, Eric Ross Arthur, at a symposium organized in his honor. As well as her other interests Professor Carr has served on a delegation to the Peoples Republic of China, organized by People-to-People Ambassadors, which allowed her to improve her familiarity with Chinese culture, and to learn about ethnic minorities, women and the disabled in another country.

Synopsis

Acknowledging the Unspoken in Canada’s Settlement History

While this paper does not directly address curatorial strategies that are the focus of this conference, it does interrogate historical approaches to Canada’s settlement history.  Toronto’s Osgoode Hall is examined as a lens through which to study the history of the city.  If one looks beyond traditional approaches to architectural studies to consider the fact that the building developed within a particular context, the colonial roots of the structure are inescapable.  The discussion centres around questions of entitlement and cultural identity.  Within this framework the paper examines what there is about that history has been left unsaid.