crystal am nelson is an assistant professor of art history whose research and teaching focus on Black art and Black visual culture(s) as articulated through painting, photography, film/video, and performance. Her other interests include identity and representation, critical pleasure studies, and contemporary Black life. Her current project examines the visual culture of Black pleasure and the aesthetics of Black joy and safe space in the visual representations of quotidian Blackness as depicted by the painters labeled as the Black romantic. Professor nelson’s writing has appeared in The Art Bulletin, Art Journal, Feminist Media Histories, Contact Sheet, Brooklyn Rail, caa.reviews, among other places. She has a forthcoming article being published in Woman’s Art Journal. Alongside her research and teaching, Professor nelson has organized and co-organized several exhibitions including Heterotopia, Dark Desires, and Pictures and Progress: The Black Panther, 1966-2016 (with Drs. Cathy T. Thomas and Kiran Garcha).
