Charmaine Nelson

Charmaine Andrea Nelson (born 1971) is an art history professor in the Department of Art History and Communications Studies at McGill University since 2003.^[1] She is the first tenured Black professor of art history in Canada.^[2][3] Nelson's research interests include the visual culture of slavery, race and representation, Black Canadian studies and African Canadian history as well as critical theory, post-colonial studies, black feminist scholarship, Transatlantic Slavery Studies, and Black Diaspora Studies.^[4][5][1]

Education

• BFA Art History 1994, Concordia University
• MFA Art History 1995, Concordia University
• PhD Art History 2001, the University of Manchester (UK)^[3]

Career

After completing her BFA and MFA degrees at Concordia University, Nelson worked at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, Ontario.^[3] She then began her PhD at Queen's University which she completed at the University of Manchester (UK) in 2001.^[3] Before obtaining her current position at McGill University, Nelson was an Assistant professor at University of Western Ontario.^[5] Throughout her career, Nelson has held several fellowships and research chairs including a Caird Senior Research Fellowship, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, UK (2007), a Fulbright Visiting Research Chair, University of California – Santa Barbara (2010) as well as a Visiting Professorship in the Department of Africology at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee (2011). In 2015, she was an Associate Member of the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art at Concordia University. From 2015 to 2017, Nelson was a Faculty Fellow at McGill's Institute for Public Life of the Arts and Ideas.^[6] She has been a member of the Royal Society of Canada's College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists since 2016.^[7] Nelson has also been appointed the William Lyon Mackenzie King Visiting Professor of Canadian Studies at Harvard University for the 2017–2018 academic year.^[6][1]

Public speaking

Nelson regularly offers public presentations of her research. Some of these include:

• McCready Lecture on Canadian Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario, "From African to Creole: Examining Creolization through the Art and Fugitive Slave Advertisements of Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Canada and Jamaica" (2016)^[8]
• Walker Cultural Leader Series and Canada 150 at Brock University, "Colonial Print Culture and the Limits of Enslaved Resistance: Examining the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth-Century Fugitive Slave Archive in Canada and Jamaica" (2017)^[9]
• Slavery and human rights: struggles of representation Lectures presented by Réseau art actuel, "Mining a Colonial Archive: Fugitive Slave Advertisements – An Untapped Resource in the Study of Slavery in Canada" (2017)^[10]

Publications

• Co-edited volume Racism Eh?: A Critical Inter-Disciplinary Anthology of Race and Racism in Canada (Concord, Ontario: Captus Press, 2004)   
• Edited volume Ebony Roots, Northern Soil: Perspectives on Blackness in Canada (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2010)   
• Edited volume Legacies Denied: Unearthing the Visual Culture of Canadian Slavery (Montreal: Printed for author by McGill Copy Service, 2013)   
• Single-authored book The Color of Stone: Sculpting the Black Female Subject in Nineteenth-Century America (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007)   
• Single-authored book Representing the Black Female Subject in Western Art (New York: Routledge, 2010)
• Single-authored book Slavery, Geography, and Empire in Nineteenth-Century Marine Landscapes of Montreal and Jamaica (London, UK: Routledge/Taylor and Francis, 2016)   
• Single-authored book Towards an African-Canadian Art History: Art, Memory, and Resistance (Concord, Ontario: Captus Press, forthcoming)^[1]

Recognition

Charmaine Nelson has received a Woman of Distinction Award from the Montreal's Women's YWCA in 2012 (Arts and Culture Category) as well as a Teaching Award from The Arts Undergraduate Society of McGill University (2016), and McGill's Faculty Award for Equity and Community Building (2016).^[1]

References