Charmaine A. Nelson is an Associate Professor of Art History at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Her research is in the areas of Race and Representation and the Visual Culture of Slavery. Her teaching includes courses on Canadian Art, Nineteenth-Century Sculpture, Popular Culture, the Trans Atlantic World, Postcolonial Theory, Black Diaporic Art and Museum Studies. She curated the national exhibition Through An-Other's Eyes: White Canadian Artists - Black Female Subjects (1999) which is also an exhibition catalogue of the same name.
She is co-editor and contributor to the anthology Racism Eh?: A Critical Inter-Disciplinary Anthology of Race and Racism in Canada (Concord: Captus Press, 2004) and author of The Color of Stone: Sculpting Black Female Subjects in Nineteenth-Century America (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007) and Representing the Black Female Subject in Western Art (New York: Routledge in 2010). Her most recent book is Ebony Roots, Northern Soil: Perspectives on Blackness in Canada (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2010). Her new manuscript project examines nineteenth-century landscapes of Montreal and Jamaica, two colonial trade and slave ports, through critical readings of geography, topography, colonial commerce and travel.
Research and Teaching Interests:
- Canadian Art
- 19th Century American & European Art
- Critical Theory
- Post-Colonial & Post-Colonial Feminist Theory
- Visual Culture of Slavery
- Historical & Contemporary Popular Culture
- Neoclassical Sculpture
- British Imperialism and Landscape Art
Selected Publications
Books
Ebony Roots, Northern Soil: Perspectives on Blackness in Canada (UK: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2010).
Representing the Black Female Subject in Western Art (New York: Routledge in 2010)
The Color of Stone: Sculpting the Black Female Subject in Nineteenth-Century America (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007).
Racism Eh?: A Critical Inter-Disciplinary Anthology of Race in the Canadian Context (Concord: Captus Press/Captus University, Publications, 2004) *co-edited with Camille Nelson.
Book Chapters
"Edmonia Lewis' Death of Cleopatra: White Marble, Black Bodies and Racial Crisis in America"eds. Professor Janice Helland and Professor Deborah Cherry Local/Global: Women Artists in the Nineteenth-Century (London: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2006).
"The 'Hottentot Venus' in Canada: Modernism, Censorship and the Racial Limits of Female Sexuality" eds. Camille Nelson and Charmaine Nelson Racism Eh?: A Critical Inter-Disciplinary Anthology of Race in the Canadian Context (Concord: Captus Press/Captus University, Publications, 2004).
"Buried in a Watery Grave: Trauma, Commemoration and Memorialization of the Middle Passage" eds. Michelle Goodwin, Sandra Jackson Fassil Demisse The Black Body: Imagining, Writing, and (Re)reading (University of South Africa Press, 2008).
"Blacks in White Marble: Interracial Female Subjects in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Neoclassicism" eds. Dr. Regina E. Spellers and D. Kimberly R. Moffitt Blackberries and Redbones: Critical Articulations of Black Hair/Body Politics in Africana Communities (Cresskill, N.J.: Hampton Press, Inc., 2009).
Periodical/Journal Articles
"The Fruits of Resistance: Reading Portrait of a Negro Slave on the Sly" Public Eating Things (Special Issue), 30:13-23, 2004, pp. 13-24.
"Hiram Powers' America: Shackles, Slaves and the Racial Limits of Nineteenth-Century National Identity" Canadian Review of American Studies vol. 34, no. 2, pp. 167-183 (2004).
"Slavery, Portraiture and the Colonial Limits of Canadian Art," Canadian Woman Studies/les cahier de la femme Women and the Black Diaspora - Winter 2004, vol. 23, Number 2, pp. 22-29.
"White Marble, Black Bodies and the Fear of the Invisible Negro: Signifying Blackness in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Neoclassical Sculpture" Revue d'art canadienne/Canadian Art Review (RACAR) XXVII, 1-2, 2000, pp. 87-101. (2004 - backdated).
Exhibition Catalogues and Essays
"Venuse africaine: Race, Beauty and African-ness" ed. Jan Marsh Black Victorians: Black People in British Art 1800-1900 (London, UK, Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2006).
"Black Hair/Her-Stories: Joscelyn Gardner's Inverted Portraits" ed. Joscelyn Gardner White Skin, Black Kin: 'Speaking the Unspeakable' (The Barbados Museum and Historical Society, St. Ann's Garrison, St. Michael, Barbados, 2004).
Through An-Other's Eyes: White Canadian Artists - Black Female Subjects (Oshawa: Robert McLaughlin Gallery, 1999).
