Dayna MCLEOD
Videographic criticism; performance art; research-creation; Queer Theory; Transfeminist Studies
Dayna McLeod is a current Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture research-creation postdoctoral fellow at McGill University. She earned a PhD from the Centre for the Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture at Concordia University. She is part-time faculty at the Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at McGill University, and at Concordia University at the Simone de Beauvoir Institute. Her work appears in The Journal of Autoethnography, Theatre Research in Canada, Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, Journal of Aging Studies, Canadian Theatre Review, and Ciel Variable.
My research engages with representations of aging queer, trans, and nonbinary subjects through the lens of practice-based artistic research. This research-creation work looks at how aging queer and nonbinary artists grapple with in/visibility and mediate their bodies within their artmaking practices, and the central role publics and audiences have in how they contribute to and participate in representations of knowing that can be productive, kind, and empathetic as well as destructive, ignorant, and fatal. My research also examines the potential of the video essay form as a platform for film criticism in relationship to queer subjectivity and representation.
2022 “What a Feeling: Intimate Karaoke, Live at Uterine Concert Hall.” Guest editors: Jocelyne Bartram Scott, The Journal of Autoethnography, Vol. 3, no. 2, 2022
2021 “Spotting the Cougar: Performing Queer Middle-Aging in Cougar for A Year.” Special Issue on Age and Performance, Guest editors: Benjamin Gillespie, Julia Henderson, Núria Casado-Gual, Theatre Research in Canada, Vol. 42, no. 2, Fall
2021 Co-authored with Alanna Thain. “Cinema’s Missing Bodies (With Laurent Lafontant of Massimadi Afro LGBTQ+ Film and Arts Festival, Bradford Nordeen of Dirty Looks, So Mayer of Club des Femmes, and Gary Varro of Queer City Cinema).” Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, 62.2, Fall 2021
2021 “Renovate My Uterus: Aging Queerly Through Performance Art and Karaoke.” Special Issue on aging edited by Rebecca L. Jones, Andrew King, and Dr Nadine Changfoot, “Revisioning aging futures: Feminist, queer, crip and decolonial visions of a good old age,” Journal of Aging Studies.
2020 “This Is What It Sounds Like: Intimate Karaoke, Live at Uterine Concert Hall.” Guest editors: Moynan King and Megan Johnson, Special Issue on Sound and Performance, Canadian Theatre Review, Vol. 184. Fall 2020.
2019 “Kent Monkman and Miss Chief Eagle Testickle: Disrupting Colonial Comforts and Settler Sensibilities,” Ciel Variable, Vol. 113, Fall 2019