معرفی
Kelly Midori McCormick is an Assistant Professor at the Department of History, Faculty of Arts, University of British Columbia (UBC). Her research intersects modern Japanese history, visual and material culture, and the social histories of photography, technology, and gender. She leads the SSHRC IDG and UBC TLEF-funded Behind the Camera project, an open-source digital humanities platform exploring gender, power, and politics in Japanese photography. McCormick is also co-lead of the Critical Image Forum (CIF), a UBC research cluster examining photography’s political and ethical dimensions.
- Education: PhD in History (University of California Los Angeles, 2019), MA in History (Columbia University, 2012).
Mccormick’s work critically analyzes photography’s role in state propaganda, colonial gaze, and resistance movements. She investigates how women photographers transformed cameras into tools against corporate and state power, documenting environmental protests and the Women’s Liberation movement. Her Behind the Camera project addresses systemic gaps in Japanese photography historiography by centering gender studies and decolonizing archives.
Her publications span edited volumes, peer-reviewed journals, and public scholarship, focusing on topics like halftone technology in imperial Japan, gendered optics in postwar photography, and decolonizing museum practices. Awards include the 2023 Canadian Social Knowledge Institute Open Scholarship Honourable Mention and the 2018 Chino Kaori Memorial Essay Prize.
Mccormick teaches courses like History Through Photographs and Modern Japanese History, emphasizing visual analysis, primary-source engagement, and archival visits. She currently supervises no named students but integrates collaborative research into her pedagogy.
