Meet the graduate students and artists who are joining the Institute as fellows in 2021-22
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Welcome fellows!
Dear colleagues,
After joining NSCAD University and launching the Institute in 2020, I am thrilled to be able to welcome our first cohort of fellows so soon. Building a research hub from scratch is no easy feat and that we can already activate our one-of-a-kind research centre with the presence of such dedicated and accomplished scholars is a testament to the shared vision and hard work of several people.
The Institute is the only research centre dedicated to the study of Canada’s 200-year history of Transatlantic Slavery and our position within an art and design university means that our definition of “research” encompasses traditional academic outcomes, arts, culture, and media. But without fellows, an institute is just a building. We are therefore grateful to those in the NSCAD University community and beyond who generously donated to provide funding for our three graduate student fellows and to the Office of African Nova Scotian Affairs, Nova Scotia Communities, Culture and Heritage for funding our two artist-in-residence fellows.
I am excited to introduce you to our inaugural group of fellows. It is my hope that those in the NSCAD University community, academia, and the public will learn from, engage with, and contribute to their important work.
— Dr. Charmaine A. Nelson, Director of the Institute for the Study of Canadian Slavery
Fall 2021 Fellows
Jason Cyrus, Graduate Student Fellow, is a PhD candidate in the History of Art at Warwick University who analyzes fashion and textile history to explore questions of identity, cultural exchange, and agency. His research as a fellow will result in an exhibition proposal that will chronicle Black Canadian history from the perspective of dress, enslavement, and resistance. → Read more
Tonya "Sam'Gwan" Paris, Artist-in-Residence Fellow, is an established Mi’kmaq and African Nova Scotia artist activist based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. During her artist residency she will work towards an installation, Freedom Is No Game, which responds to Canada’s legacy of Indigenous residential school systems and historic involvement with the Transatlantic Slave Trade. → Read more
Bruno R. Véras, Graduate Student Fellow, is a historian and cultural producer native of Recife, Brazil, who is currently a Ph.D. candidate in History at York University. His research as fellow will focus on Canadain press coverage about the Malê Uprising of 1835 in Bahia, Brazil, organized by enslaved Muslim Yoruba and Hausa people. → Read more
Winter 2022 Fellows
Chris J. Gismondi, Graduate Student Fellow, is a PhD candidate at the University of New Brunswick who studies Canadian Slavery in Upper Canada. His research as a fellow will focus on how enslaved women and families navigated the gradual abolition of 1793 and if processes like flight were used to resist the reproductive violence of the slow emancipation process. → Read more
Tyshan Wright, Artist-in-Residence Fellow, is an artist hailing from the historic Maroon Town of Accompong in St. Elizabeth, Jamaica, now based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. During his artist residency he will examine the behaviours and cultural practices of Jamaican Maroons in colonial Nova Scotia, and the effects of colonialism and Transatlantic Slavery on the Maroons’ sovereignty. → Read more
Slavery in the News
Unveiling of plaque to commemorate Olivier Le Jeune | Watch Webster, artist, historian and Institute Advisory Board member, at the unveiling of the plaque to commemorate the first recorded enslaved African person in New France.
'I work with the dead. But this can help the living’ | Read about Phoebe Stubblefield, the anthropologist investigating the Tulsa race massacre.
New research reveals the Transatlantic Slave Trade’s genetic legacy | Read about a new study that layers genetic data with historical records.
Exhibitions on Transatlantic Slavery
Slavery at Rijksmuseum | Explore the online exhibition from the groundbreaking show Slavery at Rijksmuseum in Amsterdamn. Watch Adam Harris Levine, AGO Assistant Curator of European Art and Institute Advisory Board member, in discussion with the curators.
Explore Media on Slavery and its Legacies
Fragments of Memory: Artistic Representations of Diaspora Lives | Explore experimental ways of visually representing the lives of individuals who endured slavery between the 15th and the 19th centuries in a project directed by Bruno R. Véras, current Graduate Student Fellow and Advisory Board member at the Institute.
Portrait of a Lady Holding an Orange Blossom | Listen to the four-part series on uncovering the history of a unique 18th-century portrait of a woman who is likely of African ancestry now in the AGO collection.
Hidden in Plain Sight: The History of Slavery in Haverford Township | Watch Colin McCrossan, Institute Advisory Board member, Council on Student Initiatives, present on the public history project Haverford Township and Slavery.
Freedom Talks: Black Peril | Watch the Wilberforce Institute webinar on Race Riots that took place in Hull in 1919-1920 featuring Marianne Lewsley-Stier, Dr. Nicholas Evans and Soweto Kinch .
Slavery's long shadow: The impact of 200 years enslavement in Canada | Listen to the CBC Ideas episode slavery in Canada.
Slavery in Massachusetts | Watch the Wilberforce Institute webinar featuring Prof. Trevor Burnard, Prof. Margaret Newel, Dr. Gloria McCahon Whiting, Prof. Mark Peterson, Prof. Charmaine A. Nelson and Dr Jared Hardesty.
Preserving Black Heritage Sites | Watch the United States Embassy and Consulates in Canada webinar featuring Jobie Hill, Joseph McGill, Jr. and Prof. Charmaine A. Nelson.
Slavery, Resistance & Emancipation | Listen to all three interviews between Prof. Charmaine A. Nelson and CBC Mainstreet host Jeff Douglas.
Confronting Canada's Little Known History of Slavery | Listen to the Sunday Magazine with guest host Rachel Giese and Prof. Charmaine A. Nelson.
Why Management History Needs to Reckon with Slavery | Listen to the HBR IdeaCast episode on how slavery shaped today's business and management practices.
Enslaved: The Lost History of the Transatlantic Slave Trade | Watch Prof. Charmaine A. Nelson in conversation with creators and protagonists from the CBC and EPIX documentary Enslaved.
Recent Publications
Andrew, Hunter, It Was Dark There All the Time: Sophia Burthen and the Legacy Of Slavery In Canada (Fredericton, New Brunswick: Goose Lane, 2022). https://gooselane.com/products/it-was-dark-there-all-the-time
Christiana Abraham, “Toppled Monuments and Black Lives Matter: Race, Gender and Decolonization in the Public Space. An Interview with Charmaine A. Nelson,” Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture, and Social Justice, vol. 42, no. 1 (2021), unpaginated.
https://journals.msvu.ca/index.php/atlantis/article/view/5552
Charmaine A. Nelson, “The Canadian Fugitive Slave Archive and the Concept of Refuge,” English Studies in Canada, Something Personal: Archives and Methods for Critical Refugee Studies in Canada, guest editors Vinh Nguyen and Thy Phu (September 2019), vol. 45, no. 3, pp. 91-115. Published May 2021: https://ojs.lib.uwo.ca/index.php/esc/index
Charmaine A. Nelson and McGill University Students, Slavery Tour of Montreal, Quebec, Canada, published 9 February 2021: https://www.blackcanadianstudies.com/slavery-tour/
Charmaine A. Nelson, “Crossing the Great Divide: Slave Dress as Resistance in Canada and the Caribbean,” Prefix Photo, issue 42, November 2020, pp. 12-23. https://www.prefix.ca/magazine/
Charmaine A. Nelson and McGill University Students, Bills of Sale for Enslaved People: Quebec, Canada, published October 2020: https://www.blackcanadianstudies.com/cms/bills_of_sale_vi_publish_17_october_2020-2.pdf
Charmaine A. Nelson ed., Chrysalis: A Critical Student Journal of Transformative Art History, Comparative Fugitive Slave Advertisement Analysis (Fall 2020), vol. 1, no. https://www.blackcanadianstudies.com/fugitive-slave-advertisements/
Steven J. Micheletti, Kasia Bryc, Samantha G. Ancona Esselmann, William A. Freyman, Meghan E. Moreno, G. David Poznik, Anjali J. Shastri, et al. “Genetic Consequences of the Transatlantic Slave Trade in the Americas.” The American Journal of Human Genetics 107, no. 2 (August 2020): pp. 265–77. https://www.cell.com/ajhg/fulltext/S0002-9297(20)30200-7
Charmaine A. Nelson and McGill University Students, Slavery and McGill University: Bicentenary Recommendations, published July 2020: https://www.blackcanadianstudies.com/Recommendations_and_Report.pdf
Help ensure a national conversation on Canadian Slavery takes place. Please consider donating to support the important mission of the Institute.
Stay tuned for more news from the Institute as our fellows activate their research, including virtual public lectures where fellows share work-in-progress.
