Charmaine Nelson facts for kids

Charmaine Andrea Nelson (born 1971) is an important Canadian art historian, teacher, and author. She also organizes art shows. She was a professor at McGill University and is known for being the first Black professor of art history in Canada to have a permanent job (called "tenure").

Charmaine Nelson studies how slavery and race are shown in art. She also researches Black Canadian history and Black feminist ideas. Besides teaching and writing, she has put together art exhibitions at places like the Robert McLaughlin Gallery and the Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery.

Her Education

Charmaine Nelson studied art history for many years.

• She earned her first degree (BFA) in Art History in 1994 from Concordia University.
• She then got her master's degree (MFA) in Art History in 1995, also from Concordia University.
• In 2001, she completed her PhD in Art History at the University of Manchester in the UK.

Her Career and Research

After finishing her degrees at Concordia University, Charmaine Nelson worked at the Canadian War Museum. She then became a professor at the University of Western Ontario before joining McGill University.

Throughout her career, she has received special research opportunities. These include:

• A Caird Senior Research Fellowship at the National Maritime Museum in the UK (2007).
• A Fulbright Visiting Research Chair at the University of California – Santa Barbara (2010).
• A visiting professorship at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee (2011).

In 2016, she was chosen as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. This is a big honor for Canadian scholars and artists. From 2017 to 2018, she was a visiting professor at Harvard University.

In 2020, Charmaine Nelson became a special research leader (called a Canada Research Chair) at NSCAD University. This seven-year role allowed her to continue her research on Black art and communities. She also worked to create the Institute for the Study of Canadian Slavery.

In 2022, she moved to the University of Massachusetts Amherst. There, she started a new project called the Slavery North Initiative. This project continues her important work on the history of slavery in Canada.

Public Talks

Charmaine Nelson often shares her research with the public. She gives talks at universities and art galleries. Some of her talks include:

• "From African to Creole: Examining Creolization through the Art and Fugitive Slave Advertisements of Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Canada and Jamaica" at the Art Gallery of Ontario (2016).
• "Colonial Print Culture and the Limits of Enslaved Resistance: Examining the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth-Century Fugitive Slave Archive in Canada and Jamaica" at Brock University (2017).
• "Mining a Colonial Archive: Fugitive Slave Advertisements – An Untapped Resource in the Study of Slavery in Canada" (2017).
• A discussion about her research on enslaved people who escaped in Canada at the University of Toronto Scarborough (2018).
• "Fugitive Slave Advertisements and/as Portraiture in late Eighteenth- and early Nineteenth-Century Canada" at the National Gallery of Canada (2019).
• "True North: Unmasking Slavery in Canada Ft. Dr. Charmaine Nelson" at Ryerson University (2019).
• A lecture at Stanford University's Department of Art & Art History (2019).

Books and Articles

Charmaine Nelson has written many articles for academic journals and popular magazines like The Walrus Magazine and HuffPost. She has also written and edited several books.

Books She Wrote

• Through an-other's eyes: white Canadian artists, Black female subjects (1998). ISBN: 0921500238
• The Color of Stone: Sculpting the Black Female Subject in Nineteenth-Century America (2007). ISBN: 9780816646500
• Representing the Black Female Subject in Western Art (2010). ISBN: 9780415871167
• Slavery, Geography, and Empire in Nineteenth-Century Marine Landscapes of Montreal and Jamaica (2016). ISBN: 9781409468912

Books She Edited

• Racism Eh?: A Critical Inter-Disciplinary Anthology of Race and Racism in Canada (2004). ISBN: 9781553220619
• Ebony Roots, Northern Soil: Perspectives on Blackness in Canada (2010). ISBN: 9781443825641
• Legacies Denied: Unearthing the Visual Culture of Canadian Slavery (2013).
• Towards an African-Canadian Art History: Art, Memory, and Resistance (2018). ISBN: 9781553223658

Chapters She Contributed to Books

• "Vénus africaine: race, beauty and African-ness," in Black Victorians: black people in British art, 1800–1900 (2005). ISBN: 9780853319306
• "Edmonia Lewis's Death of Cleopatra: White Marble, Black Bodies, and Racial Crisis in America," in Local/Global: Women Artists in the Nineteenth-Century (2006). ISBN: 9780754631972
• "Speculations on the Visual: Culture, Race and Diaspora," in Multiple Lenses: Voices from the Diaspora Located in Canada (2007). ISBN: 9781847181107
• "Sugar Cane, Slaves, and Ships: Colonialism, Geography and Power in Nineteenth-Century Landscapes of Montreal and Jamaica," in Living History: Encountering the Memory of the Heirs of Slavery (2009). ISBN: 9781443809986
• "Buried in a Watery Grave: Art, Commemoration and Racial Trauma," in The Black Body: Imagining, Writing, and (Re)reading (2009). ISBN: 9781868884780
• "Blacks in White Marble: Interracial Female Subjects in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Neoclassicism," in Blackberries and Redbones: Critical Articulations of Black Hair/Body Politics in Africana Communities (2010). ISBN: 9781572738805
• Wanted (2017). ISBN: 9781894243995
• "Servant, Savage or Sarah: Enslaved Black Female Subjects in Canadian Art and Fugitive Slave Advertisements," in Women in the "Promised Land" essays in African Canadian history (2018). ISBN: 9780889616066
• "Remembering Canadian Slavery. Black Subjects in Historical Quebec Art.," in Engaging with diversity: multidisciplinary reflections on plurality from Québec (2018). ISBN: 9782807607675
• "Ran away from her master... a negroe girl named Thursday": examining evidence of punishment, isolation, and trauma in Nova Scotia and Quebec fugitive slave advertisements," in Legal violence and the limits of the law (2018). ISBN: 9781138814141

Awards and Recognition

Charmaine Nelson has received several awards for her work:

• A Woman of Distinction Award from Montreal's Women's YWCA in 2012.
• A Teaching Award from The Arts Undergraduate Society of McGill University in 2016.
• McGill's Faculty Award for Equity and Community Building in 2016.