Assistant Professor
Contemporary Art, Media Theory, and Criticism
Centre for Visual and Media Culture
University of Toronto Mississauga

Coordinator
Visual Culture and Communication Program
Communication Culture and Information Technology
University of Toronto Mississauga

Graduate Professor
Department of Art
University of Toronto

Mailing Address:
CCIT Building, Room 3057
3359 Mississauga Road, North
Mississauga, ON L5L 1C6
Canada

Office Phone:
905-828-3749

E-mail:
john.ricco@utoronto.ca

EDUCATION

Degrees

Ph.D., 1998, Department of Art History, University of Chicago.
Concentration: Theory, Criticism, and Historiography; Adviser: WJT Mitchell.
A.M., 1991, Department of Art History, University of Chicago.

B.A., 1988,  Department of Fine Arts, New York University.

AREAS OF TEACHING SPECIALIZATION

Visual Studies, Critical Theory, Queer Theory; Art post-1945, Site-specificity & Institutional Critique; Performance Studies; Historiography & Methodologies of Art History; Museum, Curatorial, & Exhibition Studies; Writing and the Visual; Interdisciplinary Studio Art Projects.

SELECTED FELLOWSHIPS, GRANTS AND AWARDS

Research

American Institute of Graphic Artists (AIGA), 50 Books/50 Covers, 2003 Outstanding Design Award for my book, The Logic of the Lure, 2003 (in collaboration with designer Liz Cosgrove, University of Chicago Press).

Cornell University, School of Criticism and Theory, The Society for the Humanities, Summer 2001. Seminar: “Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project,” taught by Fredric Jameson.

Cornell University, The Society for the Humanities, Fellow-in-Residence and Visiting Professor, 1999-2000.  

University of California, Berkeley, Visiting Researcher, The Berkeley Summer Research Seminars, 1999. Seminar: “Sexuality, Sociability, Community,” taught by Leo Bersani.

University of Chicago, Chicago Humanities Institute, Mellon Fellowship, Sawyer Seminar, "Sexual Identities & Identity Politics: Cross-Cultural Investigations,” 1997-1998.

Teaching

Teaching & Learning Center, Curiosity Mini-Grant, Scholarship on Teaching & Learning Initiative, 2006.

Texas Tech University, Outstanding Faculty Award, Omicron Delta Kappa and Mortar Board, 2003.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

The Decision Between Us: aporetic aesthetics and the unbecoming community; University of Chicago Press, forthcoming, 2011.

The Logic of the Lure, University of Chicago Press, 2002.

Awards: American Institute of Graphic Artists (AIGA), 50 Books/50 Covers, 2003 Outstanding Design Award (in collaboration with designer Liz Cosgrove, University of Chicago Press).

Reviewed in: The English Association 17, 2003.      

EDITIED VOLUMES

Journal of Visual Culture, Invited Co-Editor (with Louis Kaplan), special issue: “Jean-Luc Nancy and the Sense of the Visual,” forthcoming, winter 2010.

Parallax 35, volume 11, no. 2, April-June 2005 (Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group). Invited Guest Editor; includes my introductory essay to the volume.

Articles in peer-reviewed publications:

“Francesco Vezzoli: toward non-consensual futures,” Journal of Visual Culture Co-Editors John Paul Ricco and Louis Kaplan, special issue: “Jean-Luc Nancy and the Sense of the Visual,” forthcoming, winter 2010.

“The Surreality of Community: Frédéric Brenner’s Diaspora: Homelands in Exile,” Culture Machine 8, 2006, “Community,” edited by Dorota Glowacka. http://culturemachine.tees.ac.uk/frm_f1.htm

International Encyclopedia of Queer Culture: Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transsexual Contemporary Cultures, David A. Gerstner, General Editor, London: Routledge, 2006.

 “Name No One Man, Parallax 35, volume 11, no. 2, April-June 2005 (Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group).

"Queering Boundaries: Semen and Visual Representation from the Middle Ages and in the era of AIDS,"Lesbian and Gay Studies in Art History, edited by Whitney Davis, Harrington Park Press, 1994: 57-80 [reprinted in Journal of Homosexuality, vol.27 no.1/2].

Monographs & Exhibition Catalogues:

“The Decision of Architecture” in, J. Mayer H., edited by Henry Urbach and Christina Steingräber, Hatje Cantz, 2008: 73-75.

Surface, Americas Society, New York, NY, 2001. Exhibition catalogue on contemporary artist Iran do Espirito Santo (São Paolo, Brazil).

"(parenthetically yours)," in Doug Ischar: User, Institute of Visual Arts, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2001.

"Matts Leiderstam: Insinuating Nestings," Come Closer: Scandinavian Art in the '90s and Its Predecessors, Liechtensteinische Staatliche Kunstsammlung, Vaduz, Liechtenstein, 1998.


VU  Centre de Diffusion et de Production de la Photographie, Quebec City, Canada, 10 November-10 December 1995 [translated into French, Sylvie Fleury].

Journals and Magazines:

"Oliver Herring: Kicking the Habit," Art/Text, May-July 1999: 46-49. International contemporary art journal.

"Negative, desired," Photography Quarterly, volume 69, fall 1997: 10-12. This quarterly also served as the exhibition catalogue for “High Anxiety,” curated by Joe Wolin, which originated at the Woodstock Center for Photography, Woodstock, NY and traveled to the Miami Museum of Art, Miami, Florida. 

Book Reviews:

Visuality in the Theatre: The Locus of Looking, by Maaike Bleeker, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, for: Contemporary Theatre Review (Routledge/Taylor Francis), forthcoming winter 2009.

Peter Flinsch: The Body in Question, by Ross Higgins, Arsenal Pulp Press, Vancouver, 2008, for: University of Toronto Quarterly, University of Toronto Press, volume 79.1, 2009

EDITORIAL BOARDS

Art Journal, (College Art Association).
Chair of the Editorial Board, 2004-2006; Editorial Board member, 2003-2007.

ISSUES, international journal in the arts, sciences, and philosophy; Advisory Board, 2005-present.

CONFERENCE PANELS AND LECTURE SERIES ORGANIZED

College Art Association, Los Angeles, CA, “Jean-Luc Nancy and the Sense of the Visual,” co-chaired panel with Louis Kaplan, February 2009.

Queer Here! Queer Now! Symposium, VTape, Toronto, in conjunction with InsideOut: Toronto Lesbian & Gay Film & Video Festival, University College, U of T, 17-18 May 2008.

Decamp: a public feelings project, Feel Tank Toronto, March 2008.

Signals in the Dark: Art in the Shadow of War, University of Toronto, Mississauga, 25 January, 2008.

FLUXUS Vegas: Alison Knowles & Hannah Higgins, UNLV, April 2006.

College Art Association, Boston, MA, Roundtable Discussion: The Roles of the University Art Museum & Gallery, co-organized with Patricia Phillips and Anna Hammond, February, 2006.

Society of Architectural Historians, 53rd Annual Meeting, Miami, Florida, “Any-Space-Whatever: Toward Deleuzean Theories of Architectures, Geographies, and Spaces,” June 2000.

Columbia University, New York, NY, Gay & Lesbian Colloquium, “Race & Sexuality in Queer Theory & Politics,” 1993.

CURATORIAL PRACTICE

Curator-in-Residence, V-Tape, Toronto, ON, Canada. Organized: Queer Here, Queer Now, January-April 2008; two-part exhibition: “Love in a time of empty promises” (11 January-2 February) and “Sex is so abstract” (14 March-4 April).

Oliver Herring: New Deal Yucca Patch, New Deal, Texas, and Landmark Arts, Texas Tech University, September 2001.

Dare to Dance, installation/performance AIDS fundraiser, Landmark Arts, Texas Tech University (co-curated with Ed Check, Kelly Leslie, and Robin Germany), January 2001.

disappeared, Randolph Street Gallery, Chicago, Illinois, 15 November-21 December, 1996.

Listening for My Name, poetry & performance event in conjunction with theexhibition disappeared,Randolph Street Gallery, Chicago, Illinois, December 1996.

fag-o-sites, (co-curated with Doug Ischar), Gallery 400, University of Illinois-Chicago, 1995.

Organizer, Day Without Art, International AIDS Day, Dec. 1st, University of Chicago, 1993 &1994.

Member, Queer Space Group, Storefront for Art & Architecture, New York, NY, 1993-1994.