Jody Berland is an award winning scholar whose research and teaching offer interdisciplinary explorations of weather and climate, human-animal relations, cultural studies, media theory, music and technology, feminism and disability, and social change. The edited collection Digital Animalities: The Mediation of Animal Life in Ecopolitical Times, co-edited with Thomas Lamarre, is forthcoming from University of Minnesota Press, 2025. Her most recent book, Virtual Menageries: Animals as Mediators in in Network Cultures (MIT Press, 2019) addresses the role of animal emissaries or mediators from early European colonial endeavours to the emergence and proliferation of animal images and sounds in digital networks. She is Editor Emerita of TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies and has supervised many theses and dissertations.

Research Interests

Current Research Projects

Jody Berland is an award winning scholar whose research and teaching offer interdisciplinary explorations of weather and climate, human-animal relations, cultural studies, media theory, music and technology, feminism and disability, and social change. The edited collection Digital Animalities: The Mediation of Animal Life in Ecopolitical Times, co-edited with Thomas Lamarre, is forthcoming from University of Minnesota Press, 2025. Her most recent book, Virtual Menageries: Animals as Mediators in in Network Cultures (MIT Press, 2019) addresses the role of animal emissaries or mediators from early European colonial endeavours to the emergence and proliferation of animal images and sounds in digital networks. She is Editor Emerita of TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies and has supervised many theses and dissertations.

Jody Berland has published widely on cultural studies and on mediations of music, space, weather, animals and environments. Her most recent research explores representations of animals as connective mediations in historical, colonial , literary, and digital milieux.
Professor Berland is the co-editor of Digital Animalities: The Mediation of Animal Life in Ecopolitical Times, University of Minnesota Press, 2025; .<Cultures of Militarization (2010); Theory Rules: Art as Theory/Theory and Art (1996); Cultural Capital: A Reader on Modernist Legacies, State Institutions and the Value(s) of Art (2000); and Editor Emeritus of Topia: A Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies (www.yorku.ca/topia). Her book North of Empire: Essays on the Cultural Technologies of Space (2009) explores changing relations between nation, technology, nature and culture in Canada. This book was awarded the Gertrude J Robinson Book Prize by the Canadian Communications Association, 2010. Berland was also awarded the Association of Canadian Studies 2010 Merit Award.
Berland's 2009-2012 SSHRC funded research, 'Virtual menageries in network cultures' concerns the importance of animals in the emergence of new international relations and media technologies. Her book Virtual Menageries: Animals as Mediators in Network Cultures was published by MIT Press / Leonardo Books. In 2015 she was awarded a SSHRC Insight Grant as principal investigator of an international project entitled "Digital Animalities: Representations of Non Human Life in the Age of Risk" amounting to $300,250.00. The team has produced a website, an art exhibition, "Digital Animalities," curated by Matthew Brower (University of Toronto) and Giovanni Aloi (Chicago Art Institute), an exhibition catalogue, edited by Matthew Brower and published by Public; and a book anthology, forthcoming with University of Minnesota Press, co-edited with Thomas Lamarre (University of Chicago).

Professor Berland has supervised 13 PhD dissertations and 23 MAs and currently supervises 4 PhD and 2 MA students. Completed PhD supervisions: Kelsey Speakman (Communication and Culture, 2024), "Mediating Meat: Buying and Selling Beef in Canadian Supermarkets." Brian McCormack (Humanities, 2018), "Among Umwelten: Meaning-Making in Critical Posthumanism." Neil Balan (Humanities, 2015). “Counterinsurgency: Firepower, Biopower and the Collateralization of Military Violence.” Steven Logan (Communication and Culture, 2015). “Modernist Urbanism in the Era of Automobility: Producing Space in the Suburbs of Toronto and Prague.” Sabine Lebel (Communication and Culture, 2014). “Life Cycle of a Personal Computer: Studies in the Materialities of Risk.” Kelly Bronson (Communication and Culture, 2013). “Framing the Debate: How Scientism in the Language of the Law binds Public-Biotechnology Engagement.” Robinder Kaur Sehdev (Communication and Culture, 2008), “Liliwanna at the Brink: Visual Culture and Colonial History at Niagara Falls.” Naomi Fraser (Communication and Culture, 2007). "We Are All Connected: Internationalism and Canadian Identity." Sarah Ravi Sharma (Communication and Culture, 2006). "Temporality and Difference from the Agora to the Airport: Towards a Theory of Power- Chronography." Melissa West (Communication and Culture, 2006). "Marketing Madonna: Commodity and Corporation." Jenny Burman (Social and Political Thought, 2000). "Global Flows: Economies of Nostalgia and Yearning." Cheryl Simon (Humanities, Concordia University, 1998). "Gender, Genre and Globalization: Discourses of Femininity in the Popular Culture of the 1990s." Adrian Ivachiw (Faculty of Environmental Studies, 1997). "Places of Power: Sacred Sites, Gaia's Pilgrims and the Politics of Landscape."

Current PhD students: Sean Steele (Humanities) Improvising the sacred: Music festivals and spiritual experience; Ferg Maxwell (Communciation and culture) , Forest fires, nature tourism and the algorithms of social media; Ryan Forster (Social and Political Thought) Theorizing politics in the Anthropocene: Marxist and new materialisms; Mauricio Callao Quvedo (Social and Political Thought), Anthropocene and extraction in geological contexts. Postdoctoral Supervision: Trudi Smith, 2011-2013. “Critical and creative visual inquiry grounded in contemporary acts of photography in Canadian National Parks.”

Courses taught include: Animals in Human Cultures, Interdisciplinary Perspectives; Culture and Modernity; Culture and Technology; Encountering the Other; Communication Theory; Interfaces: Humans and Machines; Images of Animals; Reading the Anthropocene

Degrees

Appointments

Professional Leadership

Communications Officer, York University Faculty Association, 2019-2022
Co-Founder, YUFA Climate Emergency Committee (YCEC); Co-Chair, YCEC Curriculum Committee
Member of Editorial Board, IASPM (International Association for the Study of Music) Journal
Senior Faculty Associate, Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies
Editor Emerita, TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies

Community Contributions

Convenor and web manager, TAB: Take Academia Back. https://www.facebook.com/groups/622766154521199
Steering Committee member, Politics of Evidence Working Group. https://politicsofevidence.wordpress.com
Member and contributor, Friends of a New Park, community group behind Wychwood Artspace.
Member, SCAN! Seniors for Climate Action Now!

Research Interests