Kristen Holfeuer
Performance Studies Ph.D. candidate Kristen Holfeur has been awarded a GSAS Dean's Dissertation Fellowship.
Kristen Holfeuer's dissertation, “The Economy of Exertion: Contractual Reimaginings in Contemporary Indigenous Art and Activism,” proposes exertion as the labor of making connections. Exertion shifts the emphasis on labor’s products from the materiality of what is produced to the relational connections derived and maintained through the act of producing. Her dissertation examine work by artists who employ exertion across different modalities: literature (Louise Erdrich, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson), beadworking (Catherine Blackburn, Ruth Cuthand), theatre (Yvette Nolan, Maria Campbell), and documentaries of land-back activism (Alanis Obomsawin, Wet’suwet’en and Ada’istx/Fairy Creek land defenders).
Congratulations Kristen!