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Dr. Tyson Stewart

Tyson Stewart portrait
Assistant Professor / Faculty of Arts and Science - Gender Equality and Social Justice, Religion and Cultures and Indigenous Studies - Indigenous Studies
Position
Full-time Faculty
Extension
4137
Website
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About
Tyson Stewart is an Anishinaabe (Temagami) film and media scholar and artist who teaches Indigenous cultural expression and representation in the department of Indigenous Studies. His scholarly interests include filmmaking, communication technologies, image ethics, archive theory, and Indigenous media practises. His first book, Cinema Derrida, looks at Jacques Derrida’s collaborations with filmmakers throughout his lifetime and offers close textual analyses of the films’ “spectral effects.” In the book, Stewart shows how post-structuralist approaches to cinema as a ghostly form of communication emphasize the other through mourning and represent a challenge to classical communication thought.

Dr. Stewart’s new, SSHRC-funded research project seeks to foster a critical perspective of how the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a cultural and political phenomenon framed around the contentious concepts of truth and reconciliation has been processed by filmmakers, artists and media makers in Canada. His goal for this project is to convey the dignity and singularity of Indigenous peoples through an analysis of prominent themes of new Indigenous cinema, such as survivance, futurity, youth, and restorying the past.
Education
BA (Hons), York University
MA, York University
PhD, Laurentian University
Research

Areas of Specialization

Critical theory; Film and media studies; Interdisciplinary theory.

Research Interests

Biography and the archive; Communication technologies; Image ethics; Indigeneity and media in Canada;1960s French cinema culture; Screenwriting; Television aesthetics and politics.

Publications

Book

Cinema Derrida: The Law of Inspection in the Age of Global Spectral Media.  New York, Peter Lang, 2020.

Articles, Chapters, and Reviews

Stewart, Tyson, and Mary Laronde. “The Silent Enemy (1930) and n’Daki Menan: Reclaiming Mise-en-Scène as Authorial Expression.” TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 47, Fall 2023, pp. 307-322. https://doi.org/10.3138/topia-2022-0058 

“Reconciliation TV: The Case of First Contact.” Ab-Original: Journal of Indigenous Studies and First Nations and First Peoples’ Cultures, vol. 4, no. 1-2, 2020, pp. 183-188. https://doi.org/10.5325/aboriginal.4.1-2.0183. 

Review of Resurgence and Reconciliation: Indigenous-Settler Relations and Earth Teachings, edited by Michael Asch, John Borrows, and James Tully, University of Toronto Press, 2018. NAIS, vol. 8, no. 2, Fall 2021, pp. 204-206. Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/article/804051. 

“Truth and reconciliation cinema: an ethico-political study of residential school imagery in contemporary Indigenous film.” AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous  Peoples, vol. 17, no. 2, June 2021, pp. 165-174, doi:10.1177/11771801211012450.

Review of Rewrite Man: The Life and Career of Screenwriter Warren Skaaren, by Alison Macor. Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television, vol. 39, no. 4, December 2019, pp. 905-906, doi: 10.1080/01439685.2019.1643141.

“Images of Global Conflict and the Work of Mourning in the Humanities Classroom.”  Interdisciplinary Humanities, vol. 36, no. 1, Spring 2019, pp. 93-103.

“Face, Flesh, Film.” Review of The Face on Film, by Noa Steimatsky. Senses of Cinema, vol. 87, June 2018, www.sensesofcinema.com/2018/book-reviews/face-flesh-film-face-film-noa-steimatsky/. Accessed 4 July 2021.

“Before the Law of Spectrality: Derrida on the Prague Imprisonment.” Empedocles: European Journal for the Philosophy of Communication, vol. 9, no. 1, May 2018, pp. 57-74, doi: 10.1386/ejpc.9.1.57_1.

“Screening Life/Death.” Review of Deathwatch: American Film, Technology, and the End of Life, by C. Scott Combs. Senses of Cinema, vol. 78, March 2016, www.sensesofcinema.com/2016/book-reviews/deathwatch/. Accessed 4 July 2021.

Review of Black Television Travels: African American Media Around the Globe, by Timothy Havens. Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television, vol. 34, no. 3, September 2014, pp. 488-490, doi: 10.1080/01439685.2014.942967.

“The Romance of the Intellectual in Godard: A Love-Hate Relationship.” The Legacies of Jean-Luc Godard, edited by Nicole Côté, Douglas Morrey, and Christina Stojanova, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2014, pp. 169-82.

Review of Those Girls: Single Women in Sixties and Seventies Popular Culture, by Katherine J. Lehman. Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television, vol. 33, no. 3, September 2013, pp. 512-515, doi: 10.1080/01439685.2013.806172.

Review of Retail Nation: Department Stores and the Making of Modern Canada, by Donica Belisle. Enterprise and Society, vol. 13, no. 2, June 2012, pp. 414-416, doi: 10.1093/es/khr064.