Erin Morton
I am a white settler scholar who lives in unceded Mi’kmaq territory in the Epekwitk aq Piktuk district of Mi’kma’ki, a place of relational responsibility governed by the Peace and Friendship Treaties of 1725-1779. This district is also where nearly 2700 Black Loyalists migrated to in 1783, part of the largest group of self-emancipated people of African descent outside the Haitian Revolution. I trace my own maternal family history to this part of Nova Scotia, through my great grandfather, Albert Williams, who was sent to Malagawatch, Cape Breton (Unama’kik), as a Welsh Home Child, where he later married Elma Taylor before they settled together in Mulgrave, Guysborough County (Eskikewa’kik).
I earned my Ph.D. (2009) and M.A. (2005) in Visual and Material Culture Studies at Queen’s University at Kingston, and my B.A. Honours in History at Mount Allison University (2003). I was hired in 2009 in the Department of History at the University of New Brunswick, where I became Full Professor in 2018. I am currently Professor of Art History in the Department of Art at StFX and Associate Vice President Research, Graduate & Professional Studies. I previously served as Dean of Arts here at StFX. Prior to joining StFX in 2023, I was Acting Associate Dean of Graduate Studies at the University of New Brunswick.
Research
I am the first author to publish three books in the McGill-Queen’s/Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation Studies in Art History Series with McGill-Queen’s University Press. My first two books are For Folk’s Sake: Art and Economy in Twentieth-Century Nova Scotia (2016) and Negotiations in a Vacant Lot: Studying the Visual in Canada (co-edited with Lynda Jessup and Kirsty Robertson, 2014). These books explore art history in Canada from unlikely categories such as “folk” art and disrupt the conventional disciplinary and institutional narratives of national-colonialist fields of study such as Canadian art.
My third book, Unsettling Canadian Art History, was released with MQUP in June 2022 and won the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art Member Award. This edited volume stems from a collaborative 5-year SSHRC Insight Grant, of which I was Principal Investigator, “Unsettling the Settler Artist: Reframing the Canadian Visual Arts” (2016-2021). This project explored relational and overlapping colonial histories in the white settler state of Canada using visual and material culture and from Indigenous, Black, racialized diasporic, and white settler positionalities. This project will also produce my next monograph, in progress.
My ongoing research and public speaking examines histories of whiteness, feminism, kinship, sexuality, and state making under settler colonialism from the early modern period to the present. My articles on this research include “When Salmon meets Saran Wrap: Mary Pratt, Settler Colonial Placidity, and Anti-Relationality in Ktaqmkuk,” Public 32, no. 64 (2021): 110-120; “White Settler Death Drives: Settler Statecraft, White Possession, and Multiple Colonialisms under Treaty 6,” Cultural Studies 33, no. 3 (2019): 437-459; “‘The Depth of the Plough’: White Settler Tautologies and Pioneer Lies,” Settler Colonial Studies 9, no. 4 (2019): 479-504 (co-authored with Travis Wysote); and “Seeing Like a Settler: Taylor Swift’s folklore and the White Visualisation of Settler Colonialism,” RACAR: Revue d’art canadienne/Canadian Art Review 50, no. 1 (2025): 30-47.
My newest research is funded on SSHRC Insight Development Grant with Dr. AJ Ripley (St. Thomas University) that seeks to understand “first-generation” postsecondary student experiences—students who are “first in their family” to go to university—from across queer, racialized, and rural positionalities. Our public output on this work is coming soon, please follow RejectEd: The Podcast for updates!
Graduate & PostDoctoral Supervision
I supervise master’s and doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows in History and Art History working in areas related to cultural history, visual and material culture studies, settler colonialism, regional histories of Atlantic Canada, museum studies, and folklore studies. I am currently Adjunct Professor in the Department of History at Dalhousie University and the Department of Historical Studies at the University of New Brunswick, where I have supervised graduate students for over 15 years. StFX has an agreement with Memorial University’s School of Graduate Studies where students can be co-supervised between StFX and MUN, living in Antigonish or St. John’s; I can support new MA & PhD applications in collaboration with MUN History. I currently support postdoctoral fellow applications through StFX’s Department of Art. If you are interested in working with me as a graduate student or as a postdoctoral fellow, please get in touch with me. Recent graduate and postdoctoral projects under my supervision include:
Postdoctoral
- Dr. Manon Gaudet, “Shorelines: Art and Settler Colonialism at Water's Edge,” SSHRC Postdoctoral fellow, StFX Department of Art, 2025-2027
- Dr. Gemma Marr, “Histories of Sexuality in the Bifurcated Province: Discourses of Desire and Morality in New Brunswick, 1860-1960,” SSHRC Postdoctoral fellow, University of New Brunswick History, 2022-2024
- Dr. Sara Spike, “The Cultural History of Fog in Atlantic Canada,” SSHRC Postdoctoral fellow, University of New Brunswick History, 2018-2020
PhD
- Sandi Stewart, “Imperial Object Lessons: Materializing the Atlantic World in European Museum Collections, 1850-1920.” Ph.D. candidate, History, University of New Brunswick. Co-supervisor with Dr. Erin Spinney. 2023-ongoing.
- Laura Oland, “Curating a Province: Alice Lusk Webster and the New Brunswick Museum,” Ph.D. candidate, History, University of New Brunswick. Co-supervisor with Dr. Heidi MacDonald. 2022-ongoing.
- Mark Landry, “Critical Toponymy of André Thevet: Place Name Analysis of Sixteenth-Century Norumbega, Tadoussac, Anticosti, and Miramichi,” Ph.D. candidate, History, University of New Brunswick. 2017-ongoing. Co-supervision with Drs. Sean Kennedy & Robin Vose (St. Thomas University). 2020-ongoing.
- Richard Yeomans, “Inventing a Bountiful Earth: New Brunswick Settler Science and the Moral Economy, 1785-1885,” Ph.D. in History, Dalhousie University. Committee member. 2018-2024. Co-supervision with Dr. Jerry Bannister.
- Leanna Thomas, “Shaping Identities and Redefining Histories of the French Atlantic World: The Historical Influence of Twentieth-Century Acadian and French Caribbean Authors,” Ph.D., History, University of New Brunswick, 2018-2024. Co-supervision with Drs. Sean Kennedy & Chantal Richard.
MA
- Claire Schofer, “‘As Much Sugar As You Think Proper’: Recipes and Colonial Constructions in Early Halifax.” M.A., History, University of New Brunswick. Co-supervisor with Dr. Sean Kennedy. 2022-2024.
- Antoney Bell, “Between Two Worlds: Race, Sex, and White-Black Intimacy in Late New France, 1668-1763.” M.A., History, University of New Brunswick, 2022-2024. Co-supervisor with Drs. Sean Kennedy & Charmaine Nelson (UMass Amherst).
- Ashley Farwell, “Exploring Alternative Methodologies to Experience 19th-Century Blacksmithing and Ironworks: Cherokee and Enslaved Tradesmen of the Past.” M.A., History, University of New Brunswick, 2021-2023. Co-supervision with Dr. Noah Pleshat and Dr. Brad Cross (St. Thomas University).
Service
I was recently appointed as the academic lead of the Advisory Council for the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art at Concordia University. I currently sit on the editorial board of RACAR: Revue d’art canadienne/Canadian Art Review.
