Sally Pirie

Our award-winning CBR exhibit has returned from the Hong Kong opening and is now in Vienna at the WU! This time both Marie-Pierre and I were able to be in Vienna to talk about carework, and comics-based research, with the students, faculty and community, first at the exhibit vernissage, then press conference, and finally with two workshops– including one on how to do comics-based research!– open to everyone. You can read the companion booklet here.

We even made the international press!

And the UMass Press!

As I’ve written elsewhere here, this project is an important piece of comics-based research conducted in collaboration with Professor Marie-Pierre Moreau. We used CBR data analysis methods to generate the comic panels on exhibit, with an eye toward fostering greater awareness and bigger, more critical conversations about about who is doing carework, what care obligations mean for different people in higher education, and the need for universities to do a whole heck of a lot better when it comes to implementing good policy and putting that policy to work. Sexism is real, and it is concentrated in this dimension of higher education, serving to bolster it as the same old exclusionary boys’ club it has always been, no matter how people might wildly gesticulate to all the women working there. “Look at all the women! They are balancing it all so well! Feminism must have solved everything. We don’t need to do anything else!” Uh, no. Trust me, I work in a ‘feminized’ profession that should be slightly more with it, but instead treats women who have children as the problem-of-choice. (“You can’t have a research leave!” my former dean exclaimed, clearly exasperated that I would even dare to ask. “But I’m the only associate professor who hasn’t had one,” I said. To which she replied, “But look at all your maternity leaves!!! You can’t have a research leave after all those maternity leaves.” I wish I were kidding).

Never mind the fact that women do the domestic labor of higher ed. And the effects are compounded for women of color.

Following the vernissage, I gave a CBR workshop that focused on zine-making to help connect comic art with research stories. The students and faculty who attended made some beautiful mini-comics, and we are all excited to see what comes next!

Professor Marie-Pierre Moreau and I are delighted to see this work become a permanent legacy exhibit at Middlesex. I’d like to give special thanks to Nathan Fretwell, Christiana Rose and of course Marie-Pierre Moreau for making this happen! If you are interested in this exhibit coming to your institution, please reach out via my contacts page.

That’s right! When I am not skating the Rideau Canal I will be a lucky guest at Carleton Uni/ University of Ottawa giving a lecture and a workshop on comics based research, and promoting the work of CBR Lab. I look forward to seeing everyone there and having fun with art and anthropology.