FACULTY

Associate Professor of History and Theory of Photography and New Media
Graduate Department of Art
University of Toronto

Biography
Louis Kaplan joined the faculty at the University of Toronto in 2002.  He is the Director of the interdisciplinary Institute of Communication and Culture at UT Mississauga that houses four academic units including Biomedical Communication, the Centre for Visual and Media Culture, and the Communication, Culture, and Information Technology (CCIT) programs.  Louis also was the founding coordinator of the specialist program in Visual Culture and Communication at UTM. He is the author of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy: Biographical Writings (Duke University Press, 1995) which rethinks the Bauhaus artist in light of postmodern issues, American Exposures: Photography and Community in the Twentieth Century (University of Minnesota Press, 2005), and many other writings on the fields of photo studies, visual culture, media studies, Jewish studies, and art history.   Professor Kaplan is Associate Professor of History and Theory of Photography and New Media in the Graduate Department of Art as well as a faculty member of the collaborative Ph.D. Program in Jewish Studies at U of T.  In the fall of 2005, he curated the exhibition Command J: Jewish Laws and Digital Arts featuring works on Jewish themes by four contemporary artists as part of the ReJewvenation conference and cultural festival that he co-organized.  Louis Kaplan serves on the advisory board of Topia,  C/R: The New Centennial Review, Journal of Photography and Culture (forthcoming), and Mosaica (an on-line Canadian website for Jewish culture).  He also collaborates on video and new media projects with the video installation artist, Melissa Shiff. Along with Gale Moore, Kaplan is the co-organizer of the Media Generator@UTM -- a student-led and faculty supported experimental media lab and digital production studio funded by the Office of the Provost's Student Experience Fund.

Keywords
Photo Studies, Visual and Media Culture, Jewish Studies, Communication and Culture, Deconstruction