This four-part lecture series will examine slavery in Northampton, Massachusetts
and place it in the context of the larger narrative of slavery and freedom in the North.
and place it in the context of the larger narrative of slavery and freedom in the North.
In Partnership with the Northampton Reparations Study Commission
Slavery and Freedom in Northampton and in the Colonial North: Lecture 4
An Introduction to Transatlantic Slavery and Canadian Slavery
Dr. Charmaine A. Nelson, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Dr. Charmaine A. Nelson, University of Massachusetts Amherst
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Wednesday, March 19, 2025 | 7 pm
On Zoom If you're unfamiliar with slavery in Canada, you’re not alone. Most people have never had the opportunity to learn about the 200-year history of Canadian participation in Transatlantic Slavery under the British and the French.
This lack of knowledge is principally because scholarship on Canadian Slavery falls far short of the research that has been produced about the U.S. South, the Caribbean, and northern South America. This talk explores various dimensions of Canadian Slavery within the broader context of transatlantic histories with attention to how scholars conduct research on unfree people using archival and cultural sources. It also connects the dots between histories of slavery and ongoing anti-Black racism. |
THE PRINTER (William Brown),
"RANAWAY from the Printing-office," Quebec Gazette, 27 November 1777, no. 639, p. 3 |
This neglect of research on Canadian Slavery is due in part to Canada’s national myth of racial tolerance and the Canadian desire to enshrine the Underground Railroad (1834-1865) in national curriculum, a history that positions Canadians as abolitionists and not enslavers. Further, many people equate slavery with tropical regions where plantation agriculture flourished and the enslaved became the majority population. Although slavery looked different in Canada, it was no less brutal for enslaved Africans who suffered various forms of abuse and were isolated from their cultural, linguistic, and spiritual communities.
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Charmaine A. Nelson has been a Provost Professor of Art History in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst since 2022. She is the Founding Director of Slavery North, an initiative that supports scholarship and research creation on Canadian Slavery and slavery in the U.S. North. She is also the founder and editor-in chief of the award-winning Black Maple Magazine, one of the only national magazines or platforms directed at Black Canadians. Nelson has made ground-breaking contributions to the fields of the Visual Culture of Slavery, Race and Representation, and Black Canadian Studies.
Nelson has published nine books including The Color of Stone: Sculpting the Black Female Subject in Nineteenth-Century America (2007), Slavery, Geography, and Empire in Nineteenth-Century Marine Landscapes of Montreal and Jamaica (2016), The Precariousness of Freedom: Slave Resistance as Experience, Process, and Representation (2024), and Creolization and Transatlantic Blackness: The Visual and Material Cultures of Slavery (2025). |
Nelson has given over 330 lectures, papers, and talks across Canada, and the USA, and in Mexico, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Norway, Spain, the UK, Central America, and the Caribbean. She is also actively engaged with audiences through her media work including ABC, BBC One, CBC, CNN, CTV, and PBS. She has blogged for the Huffington Post Canada and written for The Walrus. Nelson has held several prestigious fellowships and appointments including a Caird Senior Research Fellowship, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, UK (2007) and a Fulbright Visiting Research Chair, University of California Santa Barbara (2010). She was the William Lyon Mackenzie King Visiting Professor of Canadian Studies at Harvard University (2017-2018) and a Fields of the Future Research Fellow at Bard Graduate Center in New York City (2021). In 2022, she was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a member of the American Antiquarian Society. She received the Lifetime Achievement award from the Universities Art Association of Canada in 2024.