Student Profile: Karrmen Crey
The Cinema Studies Institute highlights the achievements of M.A. student Karrmen Crey (Class of 2011).
Karrmen Crey
Due to her top-flight grades and two degrees, a BA in Art and Culture Studies with a minor in Film and Video Studies from Simon Fraser University (SFU) and a second BA from the First Nations Studies Program at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Karrmen Crey was in the first tier of invitations for admission to the Cinema Studies Institute (CSI) Masters program. She was a bit of a hard sell, since those same qualities attracted offers from all the other graduate programs she had applied to, but she was finally convinced to come to the University of Toronto (right choice!).
Karrmen arrived with a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Scholarship, as we expected she would, although SSHRCs at the MA level are rare. (Just an aside, and to blow our own horn, we have two SSHRC holders in our MA program this year, Karrmen and Elysse Leonard).
Karrmen is from Aboriginal and European heritage: her father's family is Sto:lo from Pilalt territory (near Chilliwack, British Columbia) and her mother is of Scottish, Irish and English ancestry. She says, “Throughout my upbringing I understood that education plays a key role in effective and meaningful engagement with Aboriginal issues, interests, and politics. I recognize the academy as a space dedicated to the intellectual work of moving forward the level of discussion around Aboriginal issues and that these discussions have a trickle-down effect on society; I am pursuing graduate work with the goal of contributing to these discussions and advancing social awareness of and engagement with Aboriginal issues.”
When Karrmen was studying film and video at Simon Fraser University, she encountered for the first time film and video created by Aboriginal artists, and began to recognize the complexity of these texts and their modes of address. To better prepare herself for graduate work in this area, she went on the First Nations Studies Program at the University of British Columbia, where she familiarized herself with conceptual and theoretical approaches in Aboriginal studies with a focus on Aboriginal media. She writes, “At the time I became aware that there was little work published on the constructive features of these films, and wondered why; as a result, I determined I would explore these questions at the graduate level.” In the Masters program in Cinema Studies at U of T, she plans to complete a major research paper on critical and theoretical approaches to Aboriginal media that will provide a framework for her doctoral project.
Karrmen has also examined the applications of media to the representation of Aboriginal issues in her own research. Noting the frequency with which her student peers reported problematic discussions of Aboriginal content in classrooms at UBC, with her research partner she undertook a video interview-based research project called What I Learned in Class Today: Aboriginal Issues in the Classroom. Interviews with students and faculty across the university have so far resulted in a 20-minute video, complete with a guide to the project and users guide to accompany the project materials and a website to broaden accessibility, and has raised awareness of the significance of the classroom climate for supporting more productive discussions of Aboriginal issues and related culturally contentious issues.
According to Professor Angelica Fenner, who teaches the core course "Cinema and Culture" in CSI's MA program, "It has been a pleasure to have Karrmen in class. An active contributor to our discussions of culture, she also works consciously to forge community among fellow students. Her collegiality is exemplary for best practices in scholarly debate, facilitating an open exchange of views that enhance collective knowledge, rather than simply staging individual displays of mastery intended to advance one person's viewpoint."
Karrmen continues her activist engagement with education and community in her work with the CSI graduate cohort as Vice-President of the Graduate Student Union, through which she has a voice on the CSI Governing Council.