Jamie Jelinski

Jamie Jelinski is a cross-disciplinary scholar of visual culture, most recently in the context of tattooing and images related to crime. He received his PhD in Cultural Studies from Queen’s University (2019) with support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and is currently a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Art History at University of Toronto. Previously, he held an Izaak Walton Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of History at Dalhousie University and a Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture (FRQSC) Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University. Jelinski has been a Visiting Scholar in the Art History and Contemporary Culture Division at NSCAD University (2017) and, aided by the Ireland Canada University Foundation, in the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics at Queen’s University Belfast (2020). His research contributions include peer-reviewed articles in Urban History Review (Vol. 47, No. 1-2), Journal of Canadian Studies (Vol. 52, No. 2), Visual Anthropology (Vol. 30, No. 4), Études/Inuit/Studies (Vol. 42, No. 1), Sculpture Journal (Vol. 32, No. 3), and a chapter in the edited volume Museums and the Working Class. Jelinski’s first book, Needle Work: A History of Commercial Tattooing in Canada, is forthcoming with McGill-Queen’s University Press. He is currently working on a second book, tentatively titled Unseen Images: Crime, Access to Information, and Visual Culture, which is under contract with Wilfrid Laurier University Press.

Selected Publications

• Needle Work: A History of Commercial Tattooing (McGill-Queen’s University Press, forthcoming 2024)
• “‘This Sculptor is a Cop’: John Reginald Abbott, Murder in Montreal, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s Criminal Identification Masks,” Sculpture Journal, Vol. 32, No. 3 (forthcoming)
• “‘Go and Take a Look at Millie Now’: Murder, Tattooed Remains, and Museum Ethics in Quebec,” in Museums and the Working Class, ed. Adele Chynoweth, 74-87. London: Routledge, 2021
• “Bad Bastards?: Tattooing, Health, and Regulation in Twentieth-Century Vancouver,” Urban History Review, Vol. 47, No. 1-2 (2018-19): 103-112
• “‘An Artist’s View of Tattooing’: Aba Bayefsky and the Tattoo Scenes of Toronto and Yokohama, 1978-1986,” Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 52, No. 2 (2018): 451-480
• “Without Restriction?: Inuit Tattooing and the Dr. Wyn Rhys-Jones Photograph Collection at the NWT Archives,” Visual Anthropology, Vol. 30, No. 4 (2017): 344-367