Sugar Cane, Slaves and Ships: Black Slaves, White Tourists and the Problem of Colonial Vision in 19th century Landscapes of Jamaica

Sugar Cane, Slaves and Ships: Black Slaves, White Tourists and the Problem of Colonial Vision in 19th century Landscapes of Jamaica

Charmaine Nelson (Art History and Communication Studies, McGill Univeristy, Montreal)
Thursday, November 18, 2010 / 4:00 PM
McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB

Charmaine Nelson is an Associate Professor of Art History, in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University, Montreal. Her research and teaching interests include postcolonial and black feminist scholarship, critical (race) theory, Trans Atlantic Slavery Studies and Black Diaspora Studies. She has made significant contributions to the fields of the Visual Culture of Slavery, Race and Representation and Black Canadian Studies. Her publications include the co-edited volume Racism Eh?: A Critical Inter-Disciplinary Anthology of Race and Racism in Canada (Concord, Ontario: Captus Press, 2004), The Color of Stone: Sculpting the Black Female Subject in Nineteenth-Century America (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007) and Representing the Black Female Subject in Western Art (New York: Routledge, 2010).

She has authored several chapters in edited books, journal articles and dictionary entries on the subjects of the “Hottentot Venus”, black British identity, black body politics, slavery and memory, public culture, Black Canadian Studies, black popular culture, women’s studies, nineteenth-century female artists and imperialism and landscape art. Some recent publications include “The ‘Hottentot Venus’ in Canada: Modernism, Censorship and the Racial Limits of Female Sexuality” ed. Deborah Willis Venus 2010: They Called Her Hottentot: The Art, Science, and Fiction of  Sarah Baartman (Philadelphia: Temple University Press,  Academic, 2010), “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, 2009) and “Blacks in White Marble: Interracial Female Subjects in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Neoclassicism” Blackberries and Redbones: Critical Articulations of Black Hair/Body Politics in Africana Communities eds. Dr. Regina E. Spellers and D. Kimberly R. Moffitt, Communication and Culture, African Diaspora Series, Series Editor Dr. Marsha Houston, (Cresskill, N.J.: Hampton Press, Inc., 2010).

Nelson has lectured at museums, universities and public forums in Canada, the USA, Britain, the Caribbean and Italy. Her forthcoming book is an edited volume which explores issues of black (self)representation, popular culture (film, television, music), multiculturalism, institutional racism and  the state of Black Canadian Studies entitled Ebony Roots, Northern Soil: Perspectives on Blackness in Canada (Cambridge Scholar’s Press, in press, December 2010). Her most recent research explores nineteenth-century landscapes of Montreal and Jamaica as products of colonial discourse and imperial geography.  She is currently a Fulbright Visiting Research Chair (2010) at the university of California, Santa Barbara.