Prominent Scholar and Art Historian Charmaine A. Nelson Named Spotlight Scholar
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Charmaine A. Nelson—provost professor of Black diasporic art and visual culture in the Department of History of Art and Architecture and founding Director of the Slavery North Initiative—has been named a 2023 UMass Amherst Spotlight Scholar. Spotlight Scholars initiative shines a light on faculty working for positive social change through research, scholarship, and creative activity
Nelson took her first art history course as an undergraduate English major at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada—an upper-level elective that was far too advanced, in which she received the worst grade of her university career. But she fell in love with the subject, and the department chair encouraged her to pursue it. She switched her major to art history and was off and running.
As she delved deeper into the discipline, Nelson quickly realized she wasn’t represented there as a Black woman.
“I always say to my students, don't be afraid of the absence of yourself in a discipline because that means your questions haven’t been posed yet. If I had been afraid of that, I would have left right away,” said Nelson, who today is provost professor in the History of Art and Architecture Department at UMass Amherst, specializing in Black diasporic art and visual culture.