“THE DINNER PARTY: INDIGESTION FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT,” IN INSIDE BROADSIDE
Essay featured in Inside Broadside: A Decade of Feminist Journalism. Ed, Philinda Masters, Second Story Press Oct. 8 2019.
"The point is not to criticize Chicago for her choice of guests; nor for attempting to take in all of western civilization in her sweep of history.... The point is, however, that...
“LE TORONTO IMAGINAIRE” IN TORONTO NO MEAN CITY
Essay featured in Toronto No Mean City, University of Toronto Press, Jun. 21, 2017. Eric Arthur fell in love with Toronto the first time he saw it. The year was 1923; he was twenty-five years old, newly arrived to teach architecture at the University of Toronto....
“INTRODUCTION” TO M.E. A PORTRAYAL OF EMILY CARR
"Introduction" to M.E. A Portrayal of Emily Carr written by Edythe Hembroff-Schleicher, Mother Tongue (Feb. 15 2014). M.E. A Portrayal of Emily Carr is a rare and moving study of an artist’s struggle against despair and loneliness and an intimate portrayal of the close friendship between Edythe and Emily. The two...
“THE PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL” IN TRACING THE LINES
Essay featured in Tracing the Lines: Reflections on Contemporary Poetics and Cultural Politics in Honour of Roy Miki. Eds., Maia Joseph et al Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2012.
"Passionate critic, principled citizen, attentive reader and editor, and energizing teacher – Roy Miki is all these and more, a poet whose writing articulates a...
“LAUNCHING THE GLOBAL VILLAGE” IN RENEGADE BODIES: CANADIAN DANCE IN THE 1970S
Essay featured in Renegade Bodies: Canadian Dance in the 1970s. Eds., Allana Lingren and Kaija Pepper. Victoria: University of Victoria Press, 2012.
"Comprising 15 essays by Canadian writers and scholars, Renegade Bodies is a book that embraces lively discussion about artistic and cultural shifts along with the social and political...
“BOTH SIDES NOW: DESIGNING WHITE MEN AND THE OTHER SIDE OF HISTORY”
Essay fetured in Response, Responsibility, and Renewal — Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Journey. Eds., Gregory Young-Ing, et al. Ottawa, Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2009.
"Along with the narrative about the founding of Canada by both the French and the English came the notion—preached by the likes of Emily Carr and Marius...
THE PRESENTATION OF SELF IN EMILY CARR’S WRITINGS
Essay featured in Emily Carr: New Perspectives on a Canadian Icon. Curators, Charles C. Hill, et al. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 2006.
"Sophie would have shared her cultural knowledge and many of her insights on art with a woman whom she was so fond of, a woman who would...
WITNESS TO WILDERNESS: THE CLAYOQUOT SOUND ANTHOLOGY
Essay featured in Witness To Wilderness: The Clayoquot Sound anthology Arsenal Press, 1994. An all-star collection of essays, poems, and photographs by 120 writers and artists to celebrate the ancient forests of Clayoquot Sound on Vancouver Island. Contributors include: Don Coles, Susan Crean, Lorna Crozier, Des Kennedy, Joy Kogawa, Patrick Lane,...
“WRITING ALONG GENDER LINES” IN LANGUAGE IN HER EYE
Essay featured in Language in Her Eye: Views on Writing and Gender by Canadian Women Writing in English (Coach House Press), 1990. This collection of original essays, articles, and commentaries by 44 distinguished authors, poets, fiction writers, essayists, biographers, and journalists includes contributions from Margaret Atwood, Dionne...
“THE THIRTY PERCENT SOLUTION: SEXISM IN FINE ART” IN THIS MAGAZINE
Article featured in This Magazine, January 1984.
"In 1978 Ottawa artist Jane Martin was the first to brave the opprobrium of the art world by tallying up figures on the number of Canadian Council grants awarded to women in the visual arts, comparing that to the number of women present on the juries. What was...
“FOREBODINGS: NOTES ON CLIMATE CATASTROPHE,” IN LITERARY REVIEW OF CANADA
In Literary Review of Canada, April 2020, Susan Crean writes about her experiences travelling to the Arctic, how climate change is poised to radically transform it, and why the region is ground zero for the coming global climate catastrophe.
"Scientists, naturalists, and Indigenous elders have been pointing to the evidence for decades, their messages...
“FINDING MR. WONG: A TALE FROM CANADA’S EXCLUSION ERA” IN NEW CANADIAN MEDIA
Article featured in New Canadian Media, June 1, 2019
The story of Chinese immigration to Canada is best known for two things. First, the arrival of Chinese labourers in large numbers in the late 1800s to build the crucial last link of the Canadian Pacific Railway—the most difficult and dangerous section...
“CANADIANS MUST ACKNOWLEDGE INDIGENOUS HISTORY” IN THIS MAGAZINE
Article featured in This Magazine Sept-Oct 2016
"The theme of remembering runs through the 94 recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). It is behind the suggestion that Indigenous curricula be mandatory and in Justice Murray Sinclair’s insistence that non-Indigenous Canadians learn about residential schools and Indigenous history. In...
“WRITING MR. WONG” IN THIS MAGAZINE
Article featured in This Magazine, Nov-Dec, 2012. This is the backstory to Finding Mr. Wong, the book on the life of Mr. Wong and why it has been possible for me to write it. In the first instance, this is because of the help and openness of Chinese Canadians who made...
“SUSAN CREAN ON ABORIGINAL THEATRE COMPANY NATIVE EARTH PERFORMING ARTS” IN THIS MAGAZINE
Article featured in This Magazine, May-June 2011.
"I joined the board of Native Earth Performing Arts, in Toronto’s Distillery District, several years ago, and quickly discovered the best perk of the office is watching a performance evolve through rehearsal. Seeing the...
“NATIONAL ARCHIVES BLUES” IN LITERARY REVIEW OF CANADA
Article featured in Literary Review of Canada January-February, 2011.
"It does not take long to discover the great truth about archival work, which is, appearances to the contrary, that it is utterly absorbing."This piece grew out of several visits to the National Archives of Canada in 2010....
“MILTON AND MICHEL” IN GEIST 77
Article featured inGeist 77, Summer 2010.
"Milton was a wordsmith of flair and stamina. A great poet, but also a great prose stylist, a sharp political analyst and a speaker of Homeric proportions. It took just one experience—of the poet reading his own work, or the revolutionary reading the Riot Act—to...
“RIEL’S PROPHECY – THE NEW CONFIDENCE OF ABORIGINAL THEATRE”
Article featured in The Walrus, April, 2008. In The Walrus, April, 2008.
“My people will sleep for one hundred years. When they awake, it will be the artists that give them back their spirit.” — Louis Riel.I spent ten fabulous years on the board of directors of
“IN THE NAME OF EQUALITY” IN BROADSIDE
Article featured in Broadside, Volume 10 Number 5 1989
It seemed like a good idea at the time, equality did. Equal pay, equal opportunity, equality before the law; all perfectly self explanatory and obviously legitimate demands for women to make, though naturally easier to claim than to effect."In...
“THE EROTIC NATIONALISM OF JOYCE WIELAND” IN THIS MAGAZINE
Articled featured in This Magazine 21.
"Hers is not museum art, in format, size or feel; and you don’t have to come equipped with a theory in order to understand it. The images, stories and symbols she uses are the stuff of daily life and everyone’s history: airplanes and sailboats, hearts...
“LABOUR WORKING WITH ART” IN FUSE MAGAZINE
Article featured in Fuse, Volume 34, Number 3; Summer 2011.
"The first critique of cultural policy that tends to emerge, then, is a class analysis expressed in terms of the twin issues of accessibility and portrayal (or the right of working people to see themselves reflected and respected in the media)."I...
“NOTES FROM THE LANGUAGE OF EMOTION, A CONVERSATION WITH JOYCE WIELAND”
Interview featured in Canadian Art, Spring 1987.
"JW: In New York there was a strong male Establishment and once you got in the door it was like joining the biggest bank in the world. You were bankable; you were the item. I recognized how easy it would have been to go...
“THE THIRTY PERCENT SOLUTION: SEXISM IN FINE ART” IN THIS MAGAZINE
Article featured in This Magazine, January 1984.
"In 1978 Ottawa artist Jane Martin was the first to brave the opprobrium of the art world by tallying up figures on the number of Canadian Council grants awarded to women in the visual arts, comparing that to the number of women present on the juries. What was...
“D’UNE COLONIE À L’AUTRE,” IN SOCIOLOGIE ET SOCIÉTÉS
Essay featured in Sociologie et sociétés, Critique sociale et création culturelle, Volume 11, Number 1, Les Presses de l'Université de Montréal, avril 1979. Article abstract:
Despite the pessimism which emerges from her survey of Canadian culture, the author sees clear signs of a renewal and a burst of...
MONOGRAPH: “JERRY GREY ON THE GRID 1968-1978”
Monograph published by The Ottawa Art Gallery; 1st edition (October 12, 2016). Authors: Susan Crean and Michelle Gewurtz. Working in oils, watercolour, pastels and glass media, Jerry Grey explores themes of nature, politics and history. Her work from the 1970s links directly to her time participating in the highly influential Emma...
“CARROTS FOR BREAKFAST” IN JACK CHAMBERS – LIGHT, SPIRIT, TIME, PLACE AND LIFE
Essay featured in Jack Chambers – Light, Spirit, Time, Place and Life. Ed. Dennis Reid. Fredericton: Goose Lane Editions & Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 2011.
"To Jack, the equation was simple: artists were providing a service and not being paid for it. What irked was the...
“N’TOW’WIK’HEGAT (SHE WHO KNOWS HOW TO MAKE IMAGES)”
Essay featured in Net wikuhpon ehit — Once there lived a woman, The Painting, Poetry and Politics of Shirley Bear, Curator, Terry Graff. Fredericton: Beaverbrook Art Gallery, 2009.
"To know Shirley Bear is to experience her language, the Wabanaki language spoken by the First Peoples living in the...
THE PRESENTATION OF SELF IN EMILY CARR’S WRITINGS
Essay featured in Emily Carr: New Perspectives on a Canadian Icon. Curators, Charles C. Hill, et al. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 2006.
"Sophie would have shared her cultural knowledge and many of her insights on art with a woman whom she was so fond of, a woman who would...
“PAWS FOR THOUGHT: THE COSTS OF MAN’S BEST FRIENDS”
In Literary Review of Canada, January-February 2021
"In the lamplight shadows, we would watch him with an intensity we rarely gave the darkened forest itself."Read Susan Crean's book review of Peter Christie's Unnatural Companions: Rethinking Our Love of Pets in an Age of Wildlife Extinction....
“A RARE BIRD: WITH BINOCULARS AT THE READY”
In Literary Review of Canada, June 2022
"There are many ways to appreciate birds, including being among them. This is not easy to do by proxy, but Merilyn Simonds’s Woman, Watching: Louise de Kiriline Lawrence and the Songbirds of Pimisi Bay offers a way."Read Susan Crean's book review of Merilyn...
“SOURCE CODE: THE MEN AND WOMEN WHO HAVE CHANGED OUR WORLD,” IN LITERARY REVIEW OF CANADA
Book reviewin Literary Review of Canada, Sept. 2019
"What we often forget — and should remember — is that every piece of code was, indeed, written by someone."Read Susan Crean's book review of Clive Thompson's Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World online...
“GENES THAT NEVER FADE” IN LITERARY REVIEW OF CANADA
In Literary Review of Canada, April 2013
"Originally The Juggler’s Children was subtitled “A Family History Gene by Gene,” which is an apt description of the plodding nature of DNA research. One DNA test always needs another. Its main contribution to Abraham’s project was providing confirmation of what was already known, and pointers for further...
BOOK REVIEW: “REID REDUCED” IN NOW MAGAZINE
Book Review of Bill Reid: The Making of an Indian by Maria Tippett (Random House) in Now Magazine, March 4, 2004
Maria Tippett is first out of the gate with her bio of renowned Haida artist Bill Reid. It covers the bases, delivering a readable, informative text...
BOOK REVIEW: “THE PLEASURE OF THE CROWN: ANTHROPOLOGY, LAW AND FIRST NATIONS”
Book Review in Geist 29.
"The Pleasure of the Crown: Anthropology, Law and First Nations by Dara Culhane (Talonbooks) is the book for anyone who wants to understand the Delga-muukw decision..."Read Susan Crean's book review of The Pleasure of the Crown: Anthropology, Law and First Nations online...
BOOK REVIEW: “NATIONALISM WITHOUT WALLS”
Book Review in Geist 22
Richard Gwyn tries to get away with two puns in the title of his book Nationalism Without Walls: The Unbearable Lightness of Being Canadian (McClelland & Stewart), trading off on both André Malraux's cultural manifesto of the 1960s Museum Without Walls, and Milan Kundera's novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being.Read...
BOOK REVIEW: “POLITICAL WIVES: THE LIVES OF THE SAINTS” IN BROADSIDE
Book Review of Political Wives: The Lives of the Saints, by Susan Riley. Toronto: Deneau, 1987
"If the world were evolving according to a feminist agenda, political wives would be on the endangered species list next to the Eskimo Curlew which once flourished on this continent in...
BOOK REVIEW “BODY BLOW TO ART HISTORY” IN BROADSIDE
Book Review of Feminism and Art History: Questioning the Litany, Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard, eds., New York: Harper & Row. 1982
They are the gatekeepers of Official Culture and responsible for devising an aesthetic which legitimizes the values of the modern artistocracy—the mandarins, tycoons and idle rich who hold...