Director, Institute of Communication and Culture and Associate Professor
louis.kaplan@utoronto.ca
A.B., Social Studies, Harvard University, 1981
M.A., Intellectual History, University of Chicago
Ph.D., Intellectual History, University of Chicago, 1988

Areas of Academic Interest:

History and Theory of Photography and New Media, Twentieth Century Euro-American Art History and Visual Culture, Media Culture, Humor in Art and Culture, Jewish Studies and Visual Culture

Book Publications:

The Strange Case of William Mumler, Spirit Photographer (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2008). Nominated for John Hope Franklin Publication Prize of the American Studies Association for 2009.
Webpage: http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/K/kaplan_strange.html

American Exposures: Photography and Community in the Twentieth Century (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2005). Webpage: http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/K/kaplan_american.html



Laszlo Moholy-Nagy: Biographical Writings (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1995). Nominated for James Russell Lowell Prize of the Modern Language Association for 1995.

 Also published in Chinese, 2009.

The Damned Universe of Charles Fort (New York: Autonomedia, 1993). Also pubished in German, 1991.

Gumby: The Authorized Biography (New York: Harmony Books, 1986). Co-authored with Scott Michaelsen and in harmony with Art Clokey.



Selected Articles:



“The Photograph and the Death Mask: Jean-Luc Nancy as Photo Theorist” in Louis Kaplan and John Paul Ricco, co-editors, Jean-Luc Nancy and the Sense of the Visual, Special Issue of Journal of Visual Culture (London: Sage Publishers, Spring 2010) (Forthcoming).

 “Spooked Time: The Temporal Dimensions of Spirit Photography” in Time and Photography (Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press, 2010) (Forthcoming).

“Bataille’s Laughter,” in John C. Welchman, ed., Black Sphinx: On the Comedic in Modern Art  (Zurich, Switzerland: J.R.P./Ringier, 2009) (Forthcoming).

 “Beings Between: Tony Oursler’s The Influence Machine as Hauntological Practice,” in Johann Swinnen, ed., The Weight of Photography: A Theoretical Basis for Photographic Humanity (Brussels: University Press of Brussels, 2009) (Forthcoming).

“’To be exposed’: Rethinking Photography and Community with Jean-Luc Nancy and Spencer Tunick” in Jonathan Long, Andrea Noble, and Ed Welch, eds., Photography: Theoretical Snapshots (London: Routledge, 2009), 124-145.



“Aleph Beat: Wallace Berman Between Photography and Film” in Karen Beckman and Jean Ma, ed., Still Moving: Between Cinema and Photography (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, Fall 2008), 196-225.

“Killer Artists: Taking Some Stabs at A Bucket of Blood and Color Me Blood Red,” for the collection Firoza Elavia (York University), ed., Excesses and Extremes in Film and Video (Toronto: Pleasure Dome, 2008), 39-52.

“Laws of Glass,” Essay on Simon Glass’s The Ten Commandments/ Prohibited Weapons in Prefix Photo (Toronto, Spring 2008) 54-67.

“Yahweh Rastafari!: Matisyahu and the Aporias of Hasidic Reggae Superstardom,” CR: New Centennial Review, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Fall 2007), 15-44.

“Dead Troops Salute: Arthur Mole’s Living Photographs,” Cabinet: A Quarterly of Art and Culture 24 (Winter 2007), 23-26.

“Beings Between: Tony Oursler’s The Influence Machine as Hauntological Practice,” in SF Camerawork (San Francisco, California, Spring 2006), 12-21.


“Out of the Picture: Maurice Blanchot and the Refusal of Photography,” Cabinet Magazine 21 (Spring 2006): 31-33.

“The Detached Hand,” (published in Korean) in Kim Sang Kyu, ed., The New Vision from Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (Seoul Korea: Media Wide, 2005), 23-31.



“Becoming Photo-Digital, Introducing Pedro Meyer” in Douglas Cruikshank, ed., The Real and the True: The Digital Photography of Pedro Meyer (Berkeley, CA: New Riders/Peachpit Press, 2005), 3-17.


“What is Represented is What is at Stake: Frederic Brenner on jews/america/a representation” in C/R: The New Centennial Review (Spring 2004): 95-122.



“Where the Paranoid Meets the Paranormal: Speculations on Spirit Photography,” in Art Journal, Vol. 62 no. 3 (Fall 2003): 18-27.



“War is Over! If You Want It: John and Yoko’s Media War,” M/C: Media Culture, Vol. 6, No. 1, Feb. 2003,
http://www.media-culture.org.au/0302/06-warisover.html



"Photography and the Exposure of Community: Sharing Nan Goldin and Jean-Luc Nancy," in Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities, Vol. 6, No. 3, (Oxford, England: Routledge, December 2001): 7-31.



"A Patriotic Mole: A Living Photograph" (on the patriotic photographs of Arthur Mole) in C/R: The New Centennial Review, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Michigan State University, Spring 2001): 107-139.



"Reframing the Self-Criticism: Clement Greenberg's 'Modernist Painting' in Light of Jewish Identity," in Catherine Soussloff, ed. Jewish Identity in Modern Art History (Berkeley, CA.: Univ. of California Press, 1999): 180-199.



"On the Border with The Pilgrim: Zigzags across a Chapl(a)in's Signature," in Scott Michaelsen and David Johnson, eds., Border Theory: The Limits of Cultural Politics (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1997).



"Walter Rathenau's Media Technological Turn as Mediated through W. Hartenau's 'Die Resurrection Co.,'" New German Critique 62 (Cornell University, Spring/Summer 1994): 39-62.


Video:



Postmodern Jewish Wedding (2006). Directed by Melissa Shiff, Co-created and written with Louis Kaplan, 24 minutes.

Avant-Garde Jewish Wedding (2004) Directed by Melissa Shiff, Co-created and written with Louis Kaplan, 7 minutes.



Looking for Ararat (An Imaginary Jewish Homelands Project). Co-Directed with Melissa Shiff (2003) 8 minutes. http://www.mosaica.ca/ararat



L’Chaim, Las Vegas: On Frederic Brenner’s jews/america/a representation. A Video Lecture” (2002) 39 minutes. Co-Directed with Melissa Shiff. Premiered at Society for Photographic Education Annual Meeting, Las Vegas, Nevada, March 23, 2002.



Selected Conferences and Exhibitions:



Co-Chair with John Paul Ricco, “Jean-Luc Nancy and the Sense of the Visual,” College Art Association Annual Meeting, Los Angeles, California, February 25-28, 2009.



Time and Photography, keynote speaker at the interenational photography studies conference at K.U. Leuven, Belgium, March 13-15, 2008. 



Postmodern Jewish Wedding by Melissa Shiff in collaboration with Louis Kaplan, special exhibition and catalog publication for The Year of Jewish Culture Centennial Celebration, Jewish Museum in Prague, Czech Republic, April 5 – June 4, 2006. http://www.jewishmuseum.cz/



Command J: Jewish Laws, Digital Arts (Works by Helene Aylon, Simon Glass, Jeffrey Shaw, Melissa Shiff), conceived and organized by Louis Kaplan, XPACE, October 21- November 20, 2005 . Exhibition and Catalog publication in conjunction with the international conference Rejewvenation: The Futures of Jewish Culture http://www.rejewvenation2005.com



Rejewvenation: The Futures of Jewish Culture, international conference and mini-festival co-organized by Louis Kaplan, Andrea Most, and Anna Shternshis, University of Toronto, October 28-31, 2005. Website: http://www.rejewvenation2005.com



Thinking Photography (Again), keynote speaker at the international photo studies conference at University of Durham, England, July 7-9, 2005.

Topic of Current Research:



Wallace Berman and the Art of Kabbalah. Examination of the California counter-cultural artist Wallace Berman (1926-1976) at the crossroads of art history, visual culture, and Jewish studies.



Selected Awards and Grants:



Working Group Grant, Jackman Humanities Institute, University of Toronto for “Nancy, Agamben, Ranciere: Ethical, Political, and Aesthetic Regimes,” (John Paul Ricco, Louis Kaplan, Rebecca Comay, Victor Li, and Andy Payne), July 1, 2008-June 30, 2009.

SSHRC Institutional Grant (SIG), University of Toronto Mississauga, 2008-2010.



Toronto Arts Council and Ontario Arts Council Grants for Command J: Jewish Laws, Digital Arts, 2005.



Jackman Program for the Arts Grant for Rejewvenation: The Futures of Jewish Culture, 2005.



SSHRC Standard Research Grant, 2004-2008.



SSHRC Image, Text, Sound and Technology Grant, co-investigator, January 2004-2006



Student Development Award, Erindale Part-time University Students (EPUS), University of Toronto, 2003-2004.



Excellence Award, Department of Cinema and Photography, College of Mass Communications and Media Arts, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL, 2001-2002.



Summer Stipend, ORDA, Southern Illinois University for Research on "The Family of Man and the Global Rhetoric of Photography" at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Summer 2001.



Fellow, Franz Rosenzweig Research Center for German-Jewish Cultural History and Literature, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, 1993 -1995.



Walther Rathenau Post-Doctoral Fellow, History of Modern Science and Technology, Verbund für Wissenschaftsgeschichte and Technische Universität, Berlin, Germany, 1989 - 1991.

DAAD Post-Doctoral Fellow , Berlin , West Germany . Research on the role of humor in the Fluxus art movement, Summer 1989.



Selected Memberships:



Advisory Board, Jackman Humanities Institute, University of Toronto


International Board of Advisors, Journal of Photography and Culture


Editorial Board, CR: The New Centennial Review