Masks

• In Event: 31.085 - Trains, Tents, and Board Games: Collaborative Teacher Research Into Historical Trauma Through Arts-Based Inquiry

Abstract

One group of student researchers were drawn to the challenges of representation within Maus, particularly Spiegelman’s decision to represent different nationalities as animals. The group made masks of the different animals Spiegelman chose – mice, cats, frogs, pigs, and dogs (Fig. 3) – and used these as a springboard for imagining modern-day characters whose life histories subverted or critiqued the stereotypes at play in the animal versions of themselves. In a dramatic presentation, students explored historical and contemporary politics of representation, race, anti-Semitism, and difference.

Author

• Doug Friesen, University of Toronto