Gender & Women's Studies Faculty - Gender & Social Justice

Faculty Profile

Jenn Cole is a mixed-ancestry Algonquin Anishinaabe-kwe and Assistant Professor in Gender and Women's Studies at Trent University. She researches Indigenous Performance as it intersects with settler/Indigenous relations and reciprocal relationship to the land, especially at the site of the Kiji Sibi/Ottawa River in Algonquin Territory.

Her older work focuses on the cultural history of hysteria and the hysterics’ modes of resistance to misogynist medical spectacle. Her other published writing is about the political force of inarticulacy, the activist elements of intimacy created by imperfect storytelling, Indigenous feminist methodologies and feminist performance adaptations.

In programming, curation, publication, public talks, teaching and performance, she works to create experiences that enable participants across generations to decolonize their relationships to place and one another through multi-arts practices. She is Creative Director of the Aging Activisms Research Collective; Co-Investigator in the SSHRC-funded partnership development project, Gatherings: Archival and Oral Histories of Canadian Performance; Co-Conveynor of the Indigenous Performance Research in the Americas Working Group for the American Society for Theatre Research; and editor of Gatherings, a publication for the collection and distribution of creative scholarly work in performance. She has conducted arts, workshop and performance scholarship programming for events like Precarious Festival, the national Canadian Association for Theatre Research conferences (2017, 2018); Stories of Resistance, Resurgence and Resilience in Nogojiwanong/Peterborough: Aging Activisms Intergenerational Storytelling Workshops (2018); Impossible Projects Symposia (2016, 2018); The Future of Cage: Credo conference (2012) and Polyphony (2005-7).

Select Publications

(forthcoming) Cole, J. (2019) “Lament for Confederation, Chief Dan George [Geswanoth Slahoot]: Assertions of Sovereignty” in Canadian Plays and Performance Documents.
Cole, J. (2019) “You are Enough: Love Poems for the End of the World: Review” in Muskrat Magazine.
Cole, J. (2019) “Review of Julie Burelle’s Encounters on Contested Lands” in Theatre Annual.
Cole, J. (2019) “Shanty Songs and Echoing Rocks: Upsurges of Memory Along Fault Lines of Extraction Extraction” in Canadian Theatre Review 180.
Cole, J. (2018) “Relinquishing Expertise: Notes on Indigenous Feminist Performance Methodologies” in Canadian Theatre Review 178.
Cole, J. (2018) “Following Nan to the Kiji Sibi” in Unsettling Activisms. Critical Interventions on Aging, Gender, and Social Change,Eds. Melissa Baldwin, May Chazan and Pat Evans. Toronto: Women’s Press/Canadian Scholars Press.
Cole, J. (2018) “I am Dancing with the Ancestors and there is Joy in it,” in Feminist Space Camp ed. Tita Kyrtsakas and Jess Watkin: online.
Cole, J. (2018) “Be Changed and then Don’t Stop: What 2894 Can Do” on 2894.ca.
Cole, J. (2017) “Horrific Flesh, Holy Theatre” in Invisible Cultures 27.
Cole, J. (2017) “Gatherings Manifesto: A Call to Performance Writers and Makers” in Gatherings. Ed Jenn Cole. Jackson’s Creek Press.
Cole, J. (2015) “Good Dirt: A Performance Reflection” in Hysteria: Hysterical Feminisms: UK. Online and in print. Co-authored with Gina Brintnell and Myrto Koumarianos.
Cole, J. (2012) “Danger Music: On the Intimacy of Screaming” in Toronto Review of Books; Chirograph.

Select Public Talks

The Opening Keynote Plenary “What Can Critical Decolonial Community Based Storytelling Research Offer Aging Studies?,” North American Network of Aging Studies and European Network of Aging Studies (2019).
“Manifesting Resistance, Reconceptualizing Archive: Indigenous Memory Practices,” Women’s and Gender Studies and Recherches Feministes (2019).
“Methodology Is Hot Gluing Seed Beads into Nan’s Broken Necklace,” Graduate Foundations in Gender and Feminist Studies: Discovering Feminist, Decolonial Research, Trent University (2018).
“My Performance as Research Practice: How Screaming, Trying to Fit Myself into a Teapot, and Drawing with Strangers Has Shifted my Knowledge Practice,” U of T PhD Seminar in Performance Research Methods (2017).
“Creative Work for Social Change with Kwe in Nogojiwanong: A Conversation with Hilary Wear and Mindy Knott,” Impossible Projects Symposium (2018).
“River as Archive, River as Witness: Spectacle and Ceremony in Mìwàte at Chaudière Falls,” Canadian Association for Theatre Research Performance History Working Group (2018).
“Sarah de Carlo, Images and Processes: A Public Interview” Intersections Series, Trent University.

Select Performances

“Gitigaan: Dances for Gardens,” William Kingfisher’s Gitigaan/Enewendewin project and Artspace’s InSites Festival (2019)
2019-2021 “Jimaan,” How to approach a Canoe dance exploration series/Alternating Currents (2019-21)
“Traplines,” Small Dance for Small Spaces Festival (2019)
Dumoine River Art for Wilderness Residency, CPAWS-OV (2018)
“Walking Our Way Here,” Canadian Association for Theatre Research Conference (2018)
“Following Nan to the Kiji Sibi Part II,” Manifesting Resistance (2018)
“Listening to Kashtin with my Mom,” Gatherings and Unsettling Activisms book launches
Alternating Currents Program Artist, Public Energy (2017)
“Tracing Nan: A Trans-Generational Map Home,” American Society for Theatre Research, Minneapolis Marriott (2016)
“Espionage/Clairvoyance: Traipsing the Memories of Transformative Teenage Witnessing,” Capital Wayfaring: Peripatetic Explorations (2015)

Current Courses

WMST 1001H: Thinking Gender: An Introduction
WMST 1002H: Gender Matters: Issues and Contexts
WMST 2487H: Decolonizing Feminisms
WMST 3796H/4796H: Feminist Psychologies
WMST 3860H: Gender, Race and Class
WMST 4932H: Sex, Gender, Science
WMST 4901H: Stories of Childhood Well-Being in Community and Social Service Involvement in Indigenous Communities in Ontario
WMST 4995Y: Advanced Seminar in Feminist Research: Indigenous Feminist and Queer/2S Artistic Activisms