Issue II, Fall 2021
No images? Click here
Director’s Message
Dear colleagues,
I recently participated in a virtual seminar hosted by Mount Stuart House and Gardens, Isle Bute, Scotland. Entitled Unravelling the Mystery: Edmonia Lewis at Bute, I was one of four panelists who discussed the intriguing (and as yet, not fully researched) nineteenth-century relationship between an artist (Edmonia Lewis) and her patron (John Patrick Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute). The occasion
of the panel discussion was the public installation of Lewis’ Bust of Christ (last displayed in 1905), a work they believe to have been purchased in Rome during the Marquess’ 1869 visit. Although their shared Catholicism provided a significant connection, it is unknown if the two ever met.
Mary Edmonia Lewis has been a fascination of mine for over twenty years. I have written about her extensively, including in my first single-authored book, The Color of Stone: Sculpting the Black Female Subject in Nineteenth-Century America (2007).
Of African and Indigenous ancestry, Lewis told people that she was born around 1844 in upstate New York. But the discrepancies documented in various interviews reveal that she perhaps did not know either detail of her life. Orphaned at a young age, she was raised by her mother’s Indigenous family and financially supported by a brother. How her dream of becoming a professional artist took root is not known, but her earliest known artwork - a pencil sketch of Urania (1862) gifted to a classmate at Oberlin College, as a wedding present – indicates that it began in her youth.
By the winter of 1866, after a short residence in Boston, Lewis – with the help of abolitionist patrons - had established her own sculptor’s studio in the heart of Rome, beginning immediate work on ideal marble pieces which represented the plight of formerly enslaved Africans in the USA. She went on to become the first Black or Indigenous American to achieve an international reputation as a professional sculptor. To understand how improbable (and to most of her contemporaries) impossible her goal would have seemed, one must comprehend that neoclassical sculpture was considered an elite, white male domain. The central subject matter was the nude, and studying human anatomy meant accessing life drawing classes through art academies or studying from cadavers at medical schools; both pathways that were almost universally blocked to women of colour at the time. How then did Lewis access such training? We are still trying to piece her biography together, but we know that she was largely self-taught.
In a world and at a moment when people of her racial heritage were enslaved, Lewis became an internationally renowned sculptor who used her art to educate transatlantic audiences about the dignity and suffering of both of her races. With absolutely no role models from her own background to look to, how did she dream a dream so big? That question is part of the wonder of Lewis, who has a faithful group of near-fanatical admirers, tirelessly working to recuperate the missing aspects of her complex biography.
Edmonia Lewis’ most famous sculptures are her Hagar (1875) and Death of Cleopatra (1875), both prominently displayed at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition in 1876. Lewis died in 1907 in Hammersmith, London. It is still unclear when she relocated from Rome to London and at what age she stopped producing art. So, we Lewis-admirers do not know how many more sculptures remain to be found. But inspired by Lewis’ undaunted example, the search continues.
Edmonia Lewis and her art are an inspiration, a reminder for me in my new role as Director of this Institute, to dream bigger and bolder than the imposed barriers of circumstances, identity, and context typically permit. As scholars of Transatlantic Slavery, she also reminds us that it is often harder to recuperate the lives and experiences of free Blacks in the period of slavery than the enslaved. But I’ll leave that discussion for another time…
— Dr. Charmaine A. Nelson, Director of the Institute for the Study of Canadian Slavery
Fellows' Talks
Bruno R. Verás: Institute Fellow Talk | Thursday, December 2, 2021 From 12-1pm AST | Virtual Talk Passcode: 5TAD9C
Bruno R. Verás delves into how the Canadian media covered slave rebellions in Brazil with his presentation The Canadian Press on “quant à ce qui concerne Bahia”: White fear, Racism and the International News Coverage of the Muslim African slave rebellions.
Tonya "Sam'Gwan" Paris: Institute Fellow Talk | Tuesday, December 14, 2021 at 6-7pm AST | Virtual Talk Passcode: k1wxpG
Tonya "Sam'Gwan" Paris will give a virtual studio tour to unveil her new work, Freedom is No Game. In this work, Paris responds to Canada’s legacy of Indigenous residential school systems and historic involvement with the Transatlantic Slave Trade to create a one-of-a-kind custom giant chess set.
Jason Cyrus: Institute Fellow Talk | Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 4:30-5:30pm AST | Virtual Talk: Passcode: 55C8eB
Jason Cyrus chronicles Black Canadian history from the perspective of dress, enslavement, and resistance with his presentation Dressing for the Resistance: Style as Amour Among Black Canadians.
For more information, accessibly inquiries or to request to join virtual Fellows' Talks by phone, please contact: theinstitute@nscad.ca
Impact Statements
The Visual Culture of Slavery with Prof. Charmaine A. Nelson
By Emily Davidson, MFA candidate, NSCAD University
Taught in the winter semester of 2021 by Prof. Charmaine A. Nelson, The Visual Culture of Slavery course reshaped how I think about the world, approach research, and make art. Prof. Nelson brings deep empathy, rigorous scholarship, and sharp attention to detail to her classroom. Of utmost value is the way she teaches her students to “read against the grain” as a method to interrogate colonial archival sources - typically produced by enslavers to justify, sustain, and expand the institution of slavery. Prof. Nelson’s engaging participatory approach brought out and developed my skills to identify aspects of archival documents and visual culture that can be used to recuperate fragments of enslaved peoples’ lives. As a printmaking artist, I was able to thematically focus my research on the integral role white settler printers had in constituting the territories that became Canada as a slave society—a process that continues to produce anti-black racism in Canadian media and society today. Prof. Nelson uses her classroom to actively grow the disciplines of Canadian Slavery Studies and the Visual Culture of Transatlantic Slavery, two dramatically understudied fields. Before her class, my exposure to Canadian Slavery was minimal. Through her thoughtfully designed curriculum, I went from only being able to give a one-sentence description of Canadian Slavery to developing my own original research on eighteenth-century fugitive slave advertisements printed in the Quebec Gazette. Prof. Nelson’s enthusiastic support and mentorship led to the inclusion of my chapter in her forthcoming edited book on slave resistance. Additionally, I recently presented this research at the Universities Art Association of Canada annual conference, reaching a national audience of art historians, artists, and cultural workers. Prof. Nelson’s brilliance is in making the specific details of Transatlantic Slavery legible and widely applicable to our understanding of ourselves and our communities today.
Enrol in The Visual Culture of Slavery (AHIS-4401-1X), Winter 2022 at NSCAD University
This course takes place from January-April 2022, in person, at NSCAD University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. Any members of the community may register for NSCAD University courses as non-degree students. To begin the admission process as a non-degree student, contact Rose Zack (rzack@nscad.ca) who will guide you through the admissions process and give instruction on how to register for courses. For general inquiries on The Visual Culture of Slavery course, please contact: theinstitute@nscad.ca.
Researching P.E.I. Slavery
By Katelyn Clark, Research Assistant, The Institute for the Study of Canadian Slavery
As a Research Assistant, I have been working since the summer for Prof. Charmaine A. Nelson on the ground in Prince Edward Island repositories. My task has been to read through all editions of Island newspapers published
prior to 1834 (the year of British abolition) to locate slave advertisements. I have also explored secondary sources at the Robertson Library, University of Prince Edward Island and the Provincial Archives of PEI for evidence of slavery in the province. The newspapers are widely available on microfilm. When my research goes beyond the newspapers, I find myself facing a variety of sources, most of which are not available digitally.
In the newspapers, I read to identify runaway/fugitive slave advertisements and other articles of relevance to the topic of slavery and slave life. I take the evidence presented in the newspapers to identify leads which inform further investigations of the enslaved population and their origins. I also use these sources to seek further context concerning the Black community on PEI pre-1834.
I have yet to find a fugitive/runaway slave advertisement similar to those identified and analyzed in Quebec or Nova Scotia. However, the newspapers have not lacked evidence of slavery on the island. At the end of October 2021, I found a letter in the November issue of the 1824 Prince Edward Island Register detailing the May desertion of a ship crew member from a Bermudan Brigantine, The Grand Turk, in Charlottetown, PEI. The letter was sent to the newspaper’s editor under a pseudonym, “Aliquis”. This letter is interesting because the author brings to the attention of the paper’s readers that contrary to popular belief, the Island’s provincial statutes could be exploited to favour slave owners. The individual described in the letter appears to be an unnamed enslaved Bermudan. According to the letter, the enslaved male was,
“ the property of a respectable gentleman residing in [Bermuda]: that he was articled with his own conseur, and by permission of the master, to perform a voyage from Bermuda to Prince Edward Island, and from thence back again, to the same port, that the master or owner received a certain portion of his wages, and the slave the remainder; and, that the reason for having him articled, was to enable the master of the vessel to have the usual control over him in common with other sailors: that in fact the major part of the vessels, belonging to Bermuda, were manned in this sort of way; and that if any serious difficulties were opposed to the system, it would vitally strike at the commercial arrangements of that country.”
From the contents of the letter, I deduced that the next best place to look for our unnamed ship deserter would be in the Public Archive of Prince Edward Island court record repository, which are physically available for handling and reading. There were five people listed in the Supreme Court Case Document index for 1824, each of whom filed a Habeas Corpus. Andrew Joel, one of the five, fit the description of the ship deserter described in this published letter. After locating a name, a ship, and a captain, my next step was to determine when the ship entered the Charlottetown port and if the crew members or cargo were listed in the Incoming Vessel Registry.
Currently, associated with the case of Andrew Joel in my findings, there are several related documents: the newspaper letter to the editor, two court case documents referencing him by name, two separate incoming custom house records, two outgoing ship custom house records, and two incoming vessel records repeated in the PEI Register. Claiming the vessel desertion charges laid against him were unjust since the ship had completed its articled trip from Bermuda to PEI and back again, Joel and his unnamed Island court representative requested for his legal release from The Grand Turk. Still, it remains unclear whether Andrew Joel was forced to return to Bermuda after petitioning for his freedom.
The significance of the above information is multi-layered. First, if there were Bermudan ships entering PEI ports with enslaved crew members who disembarked for extended periods of time (one month or more), the social landscape of PEI’s Black community in the 1820’s may have been more diverse than has been depicted in the current literature on this subject. Were there more enslaved ship crew members who fled from their vessels once docked in Charlottetown? If so, did the newspapers publish fugitive advertisements to notify the public? Second, the author of the letter calls attention to the two remaining Slave Laws enacted in PEI, the only Province in Canada to legally proclaim the validity of enslaved people as personal property (1781 Act, ‘Baptism of Slaves shall not exempt them from bondage’). The act was repealed within six months of the newspaper’s letter after remaining intact for more than 40 years. Is it a coincidence that these two events occurred so closely together?
While I have come across primary sources that illuminate slave owner biographies like wills and estate inventories, it is disconcerting to understand that enslaved people like Andrew Joel become visible in the archives not through the narration of their own lives and biographies, but through their violent confrontations with a colonial legal system which sought to disenfranchise them on the basis of their race and chattel status.
Slavery in the News
Author says City of Hamilton is 'aggressively' removing his signs honouring a former slave | Author and Institute Board member, Andrew Hunter, honours Sophia Burthen (Pooley) with a sign project pushing for change in "how the stories are told and who gets remembered." Read more
A bill to study reparations for slavery had momentum in US Congress, but still no vote | Listen to NPR coverage
Upcoming Events
Legacies of Eugenics in New England Conference: Part 3 | Hutchins Centre, 16 Nov 2021
Ties that Bind: Transatlantic Abolitionism in the Age of Reform, c. 1820-1865 | Distinguished emeritus professor John Oldfield, Centre for the Study of International Slavery, 17 Nov 2021
Panel: Ending FGM: Female Genital Mutilation in Literature and Art | Hutchins Centre, 18 Nov 2021
Universities Studying Slavery Symposium | Guilford College and Wake Forest University to host Spring 2022 Symposium: More information
Explore Media on Slavery and its Legacies
Exhibition: Reflection/abyss/vision/legacy | Explore the journey writer Porsha Olayiwola and visual artist Dara Bayer took into the multidimensional realms of Octavia E. Butler’s archives, from the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice.
African Nova Scotian community celebrates 125 years of Zion United Baptist Church | Listen to Mainstreet NS with Jeff Douglas.
Àṣẹ aesthetics | Watch the public lecture by Dr. Nkiru Nzegwu. Àṣẹ aesthetics appear when the hegemonic veil of Western ideology is pulled aside.
Settler Colonialism, Slavery, and the Problem of Decolonizing Museums | Watch recorded sessions from the virtual conference that interrogated connections between colonialism and collections.
Thick Women and the Thin Nineteenth Amendment | Watch the webcast of Martha S. Jones presented at the Hutchins Center as part of the W. E. B. Du Bois Lecture Series.
Employment Opportunities
Assistant/Associate Professor in African Art and Visual Culture | York University, Department of Visual Art and Art History, School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design: Application details
Assistant/Associate Professor in African Canadian History | York University, Department of History, Liberal Arts & Professional Studies: Application details
Research Collaboration Officer | Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation, University of Hull: Application details
Calls for Fellowship Applications
Redefining Canadian Art History Fellowship program | The Art Canada Institute is offering five fellowships, each worth $30,000, to support studies of artists whose work has been overlooked due to their gender or racial or cultural backgrounds: Application guidelines
SlaveVoyages Postdoctoral Fellowship 2022-2023 | The SlaveVoyages Consortium, in conjunction with the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, Harvard University: Apply
Du Bois Research Institute Fellowship 2022-2023 | The Hutchins Center community is rich in programming and opportunities to network with scholars engaged in African and African American research: Apply
Calls for Proposals and Abstracts
Black Portraiture[s] VII: Play & Performance | Express Newark, Rutgers University—Newark, NJ February 17 – 19, 2022: Submit abstract
Call for Working Group Participants | Records, Repair, and Reckoning: Productive Collaborations for Archivists and Public Historians: Apply
Mark Claster Mamolen Dissertation Workshop on Afro-Latin American Studies | The Afro-Latin American Research Institute at the Hutchins Center invites proposals from graduate students working on dissertations related to Afro-Latin American studies: Submit proposal
ALARI Second Continental Conference on Afro-Latin American Studies, 7-9 Dec 2022 | The Afro-Latin American Research Institute at the Hutchins Center welcomes proposals professors, students, researchers, scholars, activists, artists, and policy makers working on Afrodescendants in Latin America: Call for proposals
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 continue to activate their research, including virtual public lectures in Winter 2022.
