Catherine Girard
Catherine Girard is an award-winning teacher whose research focuses on eighteenth- and nineteenth- century art, using deep materiality and critical theory to study the visual and material cultures of hunting, contact, and difference in France and in the North Atlantic world. She is the principal investigator of two SSHRC-funded projects that focus on methods of reconciliation in the archive and on making art more accessible in rural area. She publishes on Rococo art, the history of material cultures of Indigenous-settler relations, museum studies, and questions of visual literacy. She was a Kress institutional fellow at the Institut national d’histoire de l’art (Paris), a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer at Columbia University, a Visiting Assistant Professor at Williams College, and an Assistant Professor at Eastern Washington University. She received Canada’s Governor General’s Academic Gold Medal.
"The Metapictorial Effect of Rosalba Carriera’s Reception Piece," in The Académie Royale Art Collection: Vol. I Reception Pieces, ed. Sofya Dmitrieva, Markus A. Castor, and Anne Klammt. Heidelberg: arthistoricum.net, 2025 (Passages online, Volume 32), 136–161. https://doi.org/10.11588/arthistoricum.1526.c22181
“Painture: The Temporal and Emotional Labor of Stale Bread in the French Studio.” West86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture 31.1 (Spring-Summer 2024), special issue, Waste, ed. Francesca Borgo and Ruth Ezra. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/735325?journalCode=wes
“Visceral Castor: Animal Presence in Indigenous Beaver-Pelts Coats and French Tricorn Hats.” In Exhibiting Animals in Europe and America, edited by Elizabeth Boone and Lianne McTavish. Routledge, 2024.
“Learning on Display: Student-Curated Art History Exhibitions in the Academic Library.” Co-authored with Rose Sliger Krause. In Unframing the Visual: Visual Literacy Pedagogy in Academic Libraries and Academic Spaces, ed. Maggie Murphy et al. Association of College & Research Libraries Press, 2024.
“Innu Painted Caribou-Skin Coats and Other Tales of Elusiveness,” Journal18, no. 7 (Spring 2019).
“L’art et le temps de la chasse dans la section française de l’“International Jagdausstellung” (Berlin, 1937),” Il Capitale Culturale. Studies on the Value of Cultural Heritage, no. 14 (2016) “Museums and Exhibitions Between WWI and WWII,” 387-405.
“Space, Intimacy, and Deformity: Stags at Louis XV’s Versailles,” Interiors and Interiority, ed. Ewa Lajer-Burcharth and Beate Söntgen, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015.
“Plume,” in 1740, un abrégé du monde. Savoirs et collections autour de Dezallier d'Argenville, ed. Anne Lafont, 186-194, Paris: Fage, 2012.
Recent Conferences (SELECTED)
“Lessons from Praxes of Intercultural Dialogue in the Material Archive of the Komqwejwi’kasikl Language.” Material Culture: Atlantic Region Summit, Halifax, NS (2025).
With Michelle Sylliboy, “Generating a New Praxis and Theory of Intercultural Dialogue Around the Visual and Material Archive of the Komqwejwi’kasikl Language.” 46th American Indian Workshop, North American Indigenous Languages, Literature, and Culture & Current Research, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM), Madrid, Spain (2025).
“Against Carriera.” 36th CIHA (Comité International d’Histoire de l’Art) World Congres, Lyon, France (2024).
Public lecture in the Haseltine series. University of Oregon History of Art and Architecture Department, Eugene, OR, USA (Invited speaker, 2023).
“Painture: The Temporal and Emotional Labour of Stale Bread in the French Studio.”Wastework, Bibliotheca Hertziana—Max Planck Institute for Art History, Rome, Italy (2023).
“What Do Seals Want?” Animal Modernities Conference (part 2: Workshop), Colby College, Waterville, ME (2023).
With Rose Krause. “Learning on Display: Student-Curated Art History Exhibitions in the Academic Library.” 54th Annual Conference of the International Visual Literacy Association, University of Jyväskylä, Finland (2022).
“Forms of Erasure: Theorizing Reuses of Indigenous Beaver-Pelt Coats in European Hats.” American Society for 18th-Century Studies Annual Meeting, Baltimore, MD, USA (2022).
“Manet’s Margins: Intimacy as a Method for Inclusive Pedagogy.” College Art Association Annual Conference, New York, NY, USA (2021).
