Scholarship and Research-Creation
Research Creation
I am a feminist theorist of research-creation and critical making, and write about the relationship between art and theory.
Tschofen, Monique. “The Digital Denkbild: Caitlin Fisher’s New Media Art as Philosophy.” Theory, Culture and Society. 2015. 1-19
Tschofen, Monique., Lai-Tze Fan, Nataleah Hunter-Young, and Dan Browne. “Reforming Critique: Critical Making as Method and Practice.” Reviewing Comparative Literature in Canada: Issues of Scholarship, Pedagogy and Publishing in the Contemporary Conjuncture. Eds. Susan Ingram and Irene Sywenky. Edmonton, AB: University of Alberta Press, 2020.
Tschofen, Monique. "Philosophical Thinking as a Plastic Art: Gertrude Stein’s Literary Portraits," under revise and resubmit to Modernism/Modernity
Tshofen, Monique. "Reconsiderations of Theoria in Research Creation.” A Research-Creation Episteme? Practices, Interventions, Dissensus. Symposium, Trent University, Peterborough ON, Canada, October 30, 2023.
My latest research projects are moving me into the areas of feminist new materialisms and ecofeminisms.
Tschofen, Monique. “Becoming Matter/Becoming Mother: Wilding in Ali Abbasi’s Border (Gräns).” Imaginations: Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies, vol. 14, no. 2, 2, Dec. 2023, pp. 149–74. imaginationsjournal.ca, https://doi.org/10.17742/IMAGE29700.
Border (Gräns) (2018). Directed by Ali Abbasi, cinematography by Nadim Carlsen. ©Meta Spark & Kärnfilm. Reproduced with permission.
I am also a digital storyteller, working with poetry, sound art, experimental film, and AI generation.
With the members of the Decameron Collective (Jolene Armstrong, Kelly Egan, Lai-Tze Fan, Caitlin Fisher, Angela Joosse, Kari Maaren, Siobhan O'Flynn, and Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof), I have produced and exhibited two digital storyworlds and co-created a body of over twenty sound and video works, chapbooks and artbooks. We have held workshops, conference presentations, and write manifestos and scholarly papers about the implications of the work we do together. See the Decameron Collective's webpage for more about what we do: https://www.decameroncollective.com/
Currently, Jolene Armstrong and I are co-PIs on a two-year SSHRC-funded project “Digital Imaginations and the Decameron Storyworld (DIDS)." Collaborators from the Decameron Collective (Kelly Egan, Lai-Tze Fan, Caitlin Fisher, Angela Joosse, Kari Maaren, Siohban O'Flynn, Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof) and Fangmin Wang continue to test out the possibilities of digital worldbuilding and feminist collaborative co-creation by generating new works and scholarship about them.
The Decameron 2.0 (2022)
🔸Official Selection: Electronic Literature Organization Media Arts Festival, Como Italy (2022)
🔸Official Selection: International Conference on International Digital Storytelling, Kobe Japan (2023)
🔸Official Selection: PhiloSOPHIA: Society for Continental Feminism - Feminist Making, Doing, & Sensing conference, Mount Royal University, Calgary (2024)
🔸Honorable Mention: the Robert Coover Award for a Work of Electronic Literature (2023)
The Decameron 2.0 was inspired by Boccaccio's medieval narrative about storytellers who survive the Black Death. This explorable storyworld, designed for WebGL, features 100 co-created poetic sound, film, and textual works.
My curated gallery within the world highlights works by myself and members of the Decameron Collective that investigate women's lives. Works about motherhood, friendship, sisterhood offer a counterpoint to the Western philosophical and literary tradition's elision and containment of women's stories.
The body of four works that make up the "Aristotle Suites" in the friendship gallery (co-created with Angela Joosse and Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof) are philosophical thought-experiments that play with foundational Aristotelian ideas around change and building, bringing them into feminist contexts.
Scholarship about The Decameron 2.0
Conferences
With Angela Joosse and Jolene Armstrong. “Speculative Archives and Creative DH.” New Directions in Digital Humanities Conference. Carleton University. May 6, 2022.
With Jolene Armstrong, Siobhan O’Flynn, Kari Maaren, and Angela Joosse. “Create-a-Thon: Digital Story-telling Practice and Creation as Feminist Collaboration, and Care,” Unconference 2023, Electronic Literature Organization. Jan 17, 2023.
Panel organizer. “Speculative Archives and World Building: The Decameron 2.0.” ELO (Electronic Literature Association and Media Arts Festival), Como, Italy. May 28-June 1 2022
Tschofen, Monique. “Epistemologies of Layering.” ELO (Electronic Literature Association and Media Arts Festival), Como, Italy. May 28-June 1.
Tschofen, Monique. “Intertextual Scholarship and the Aristotle Suites as Co-Creation.” ACLC/CCLA - Canadian Comparative Literature Association Annual Conference. June 2022
With Jolene Armstrong, Kelly Egan, Lai-Tze Fan, Angela Joosse, Kari Maaren, Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof, The Decameron 2.0.” Centre for Digital Humanities, Toronto Metropolitan University, March 17, 2022.
Jolene Armstrong, Monique Tschofen, Siobhan O'Flynn, Angela Joosse, Kari Maaren, Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof. “Make one, pass it on: Digital Story-telling Practice and Creation as Feminist Collaboration, and Care, with the Decameron Collective.” PhilosoPHIA Conference, Mount Royal University, Calgary, March 16, 2024.
Angela Joosse, Jolene Armstrong, Monique Tschofen. "Lessons in Project Management for Research Creation: The Decameron Collective." Project Managment in the Humanities Conference, DHSI, Victoria BC, June 5, 2024.
Publications
Tschofen, Monique, Siobhan O’Flynn, Jolene Armstrong, Lai-Tze Fan, Caitlin Fisher, Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof, Kari Maaren, Angela Joosse. “A Research-Creation of Care: Feminist Speculation, Collaboration, and Curation in the Digital Virtual Gallery.” University of Toronto Quarterly. Anticipated publication 2024.
Memory Eternal (2023)
Memory Eternal is an explorable world coded in Unity and designed for Oculus headsets. The world expresses grieving at two scales – personal and collective – touching on topics like war, pandemic, and family. It asks, in the wake of crises, what do we want to remember and how? Seventeen immersive elegiac pieces move between mourning and hopefulness.
🔸Official Selection: Electronic Literature Organization Media Arts Festival, Coimbra, Portugal (2023)
🔸Official Selection: Interactive Film and Media Conference, Toronto, Ontario, Canada (2024)
🔸Official Selection: New Media Writing Prize Unconference, London UK (2024)
Scholarship about Memory Eternal
Conferences
Monique Tschofen, Jolene Armstrong, Angela Joosse, Siobhan O'Flynn, Kari Maaren, Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof, Kelly Egan, Caitlin Fisher, Lai-Tze Fan. "Digital Humanities as Memory Work: Memory Eternal as a Virtual Site of Mourning.” Digital Humanities (DH) at Michigan State University (MSU) - Global DH Symposium. March 18-20, 2024.
Armstrong, Jolene, Monique Tschofen, Kari Maaren, Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof, and Angela Joosse. “Mourning, memory, and immersive empathy in “Memory eternal” Вічная Пам'ять: Book of Mourning, Electronic Literature Association Annual Conference, Coimbra, Portugal, 2023.
Armstrong, Jolene, Monique Tschofen, Caitlin Fisher, Siobhan O'Flynn, Kari Maaren. "Virtuality of Grief." New Media Writing Prize Unconference, May 14, 2024.
Armstrong, Jolene, Monique Tschofen. Emergence as Method: the Virtuality of Grief and Remembrance in Memory Eternal. Interactive Film and Media conference, June 2024. Accepted.
Publications
O'Flynn, Siobhan, Jolene Armstrong, Monique Tschofen, Angela Joosse, Kari Maaren, Caitlin Fisher, Lai-Tze Fan, Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof, Kelly Egan. “Memory Eternal: Speculative Memory-alizations and Possible Futures. ” Convergence (abstract accepted by editors, paper submitted.)
Armstrong, Jolene, Monique Tschofen, Kari Maaren, Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof, and Angela Joosse. "What the Body Remembers: VR as Site of Preservation in Memory Eternal | Вічная Пам'ять" Under submission to MATLIT Materialities of Literature Volume 11 (2024)
Digital Humanities
In There Behind the Door: A Deformance of Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons
My current DH project is a multimodal adaptation of Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons that uses generative AI to imagine and activate her literary places. This work will eventually become a critical edition for students that adds to the understanding of Stein's experimental strategies and critical engagement with the media of her time.
Film Studies
My edited collection of essays on Atom Egoyan, edited with Jennifer Burwell, was the first Canadian collection on his work, and the first to represent his work in film, installation, theatre, and opera in one volume. It was the first to collect essays thinking through Egoyan's response to the Armenian diaspora.
I have also published on Ali Abbasi, Jean-Claude Lauzon, and Isabel Coixet.
Ed, with Jennifer Burwell. Image and Territory: Essays on Atom Egoyan Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2006
Featured reviews:
Tschofen, Monique. “Exile, Media, Capital: Calendar’s Systems of Exchange.” Comparative Literature in the New Century. Eds. Guilia De Gasperi, Joseph Pivato. McGill-Queen’s, 2018.
Tschofen, Monique. “Repetition, Compulsion, and Representation in Atom Egoyan’s Films.” North of Everything: English-Canadian Cinema: 1980 to 2000. Eds. William Beard and Jerry White. Edmonton: U of Alberta P, 2002. 166-83.
Tschofen, Monique. “My Life Without Me” in Routledge Encylopedia of Film. Ed. John White. London: Routledge, 2015. 366-369
Tschofen, Monique. “The Sweet Hereafter” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Film. Ed. John White. London: Routledge, 2015. 502-504.
Tschofen, Monique “Le Confessional/The Confessional.” The Cinema of Canada. Ed. Jerry White. London: Wallflower P, 2006. 205-15.
Tschofen, Monique. “Speaking a/part: Modalities of Translation in Atom Egoyan’s Work.” London Journal of Canadian Studies 21 (2005/6): 29-48.
Comparative Literature
In my scholarship on Canadian literature, I think about women's voices, interarts relationships, especially the relationship between word and image, and media.
Tschofen, Monique. “‘First I must tell about seeing’: (De)monstrations of Visuality and the Dynamics of Metaphor in Carson’s Autobiography of Red.” Canadian Literature 180 (2004): 31-50.
Tschofen, Monique. “Drawing Out a New Image of Thought: Anne Carson’s Radical Ekphrasis.” Word and Image. 29.2 (2013): 233-243.
Tschofen, Monique. “Ted Blodgett and the Pedagogy of Wonder.” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature Dec 2018
Tschofen, Monique. “Agents of Aggressive Order”: Letters, Hands, and the Grasping Power of Teeth in the Early Canadian Torture Narrative. MediaTropes 1 (2008)
Edited collection: Tschofen, Monique, ed. Kristjana Gunnars: Essays on her Work. Guernica Press 2004.
Creative writing, media arts
My creative practice includes poetry, sound art, experimental film and animation.
Exhibition Documentation, Jan 26, 2024, Brooklyn's Head Hi, NY NY.
AI Chatbot with Carrie Sijia Wang and Mark Marino - “Here Is What I Want to Talk About”
Video Installation on Bookshelves, Workshop Documentation, 2024
In a workshop led by the artist, participants were prompted to write down short conversations they imagined having with an AI, while being encouraged to think beyond the profit-driven and efficiency-focused perspectives. Utilizing a simple chatbot making template provided by the artist, participants turned the conversations into voice-activated interactive programs. The videos are recordings of participants interacting with the chatbots they built.
Poetry:
"Siren," "Epithalamium." People Say: Journal of Literature and Culture 8.25-26 (Nov 2015): 21-23.
“We are not eels,” “Complaint: To the Poet Seeking His Muse,” “Applereaching,” “and now, the larch,” “Moses at Charybdis.” The Whitewall Review 27 (Fall 2003): 75-89.
“More gentle drownings.” The Danforth Review (2003). http://www.danforthreview.com/poetry/03_03/tschofen.htm
“insecare (i), (ii), and (iv).” The Fiddlehead 214 (Jan 2003): 69-71.
“from buried things.” Contemporary Verse Two: The Canadian Journal of Poetry and Critical Writing 24.3 (Winter 2002): 75-82.
“consumed.” New Delta Review 18.1 (Fall/Winter 2000): 23.
Media:
“Chatbot,” Carrie Sijia Wang, Mark Marino and Monique Tschofen. Included in Carrie Sijia Wang, Rituals of Social Transformation, Brooklyn’s Head Hi, Brooklyn, New York, Jan 26, 2024.
"Seed Generator," Memory Eternal 2023.
“(=6x∞)||“if a (selfie) self was selfless” Sudden Gallery, Submitted, Jan 2023
“Zoom Storytelling with the Decameron Collective” (sound art) Decameron 2.0 2022
“The Dressmaker’s Daughter” (video: story and voice-Lai-Tze Fan, animation and film: Monique Tschofen) Decameron 2.0 2022
“10 seconds forever” (video: poem and film-Monique Tschofen) 2022
“Travelling to Rome in a Pandemic” (video: poem, photography-Caitlin Fisher, film-Monique Tschofen) Decameron 2.0 2022
“Covid Stories, Maternal Worries” (e-lit/text: story, photos: Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof; book design: Monique Tschofen) Decameron 2.0 2022
“Pandemic Suite 5: Lonely (Improv 596)” (sound art: composer and Pianist: Kari Maaren, film: Monique Tschofen) Decameron 2.0 2022
“A form, a privation, and an underlying thing (eidos, sterēsis, hupokeimenon)” (e-lit/film: poem and film: Monique Tschofen; photography: Monique Tschofen, Kari Maaren and Angela Joosse) Decameron 2.0 2022
“Being is Said in Many Ways” (e-lit/film: poem and video: Monique Tschofen) Decameron 2.0 2022
“Depending on a Particular Relation” (e-lit: poem Monique Tschofen, film Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof) Decameron 2.0 2022
“Garden film 1” (e-lit/film: text: Boccaccio, film: Monique Tschofen) Decameron 2.0 2022
“Garden film 2” (e-lit/film: text: Boccaccio, film: Monique Tschofen) Decameron 2.0 2022
“Earth - Garden Triptych (Brickworks)” (digital photography) Decameron 2.0 2022
“Water – (Nova Scotia)” (digital photography) Decameron 2.0 2022
“Boats in a Storm” (e-lit, poetry: Monique Tschofen, film: Jolene Armstrong) Decameron 2.0 2022
“Grief Is” (e-lit/concrete poetry: Monique Tschofen)
“Sky loop” (e-lit /video: Monique Tschofen) Decameron 2.0 2022
Interviews
Liu, Lulu, and Jin Sol Kim. In Conversation with the Decameron 2.0. Electronic Book Review, 2021.
Editing
I sit on the advisory board for the biannual journal Interfaces: Image / Texte / Language.
Created in 1991, Interfaces is an open access semiannual journal. Bilingual, it focuses on intermediality, on the relationship between text(s) and image(s), art and literature, history and visual sources as well as extending to the history of the visual arts and the epistemology of images. The journal is co-edited by the Université de Bourgogne, the College of the Holy Cross, and the Université Paris Cité.
Issues 1 to 35 are available on Persée.
I have co-edited, with Lai-Tze Fan, a special issue of the journal Imaginations: A Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies, titled Vibrant Materialities Across Media, Literature, and Theory / Numéro spécial : Matérialités vibrantes à travers les médias, la littérature et la théorie (14.2 2023).
The special issue represents work from the Canadian Comparative Literature Working Group on Media and Materialities I co-led with Marcello Vitali-Rosati and Lai-Tze Fan.