Charmaine A. Nelson has joined the department of history of art and architecture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Since 2020, she was a Canada Research Chair in Transatlantic Black Diasporic Art and Community Engagement and the founding director of the Institute for the Study of Canadian Slavery at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University in Halifax. Earlier, she taught at McGill University in Montreal for 17 years. Dr. Nelson is the author or co-author of seven books including Slavery, Geography and Empire in Nineteenth-Century Marine Landscapes of Montreal and Jamaica (Routledge, 2016).
Dr. Nelson holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in art history from Concordia University in Montreal. She earned a Ph.D. in art history from the University of Manchester in England.
Vene Baggett has been appointed assistant lecturer and field coordinator in the department of social work at Texas A&M University-Central Texas in Killeen. She most recently served as a student services liaison in the LaVega Independent School District in Belmead, Texas.
Baggett is a graduate of Texas A&M University-Central Texas. She holds a master of social work degree from Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas.
Catina Bacote is a new assistant professor of English at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. She was an assistant professor of English at St. John’s University in Queens, New York. Bacote is a published nonfiction writer whose current book project chronicles the lasting impact of the illegal drug trade on families and communities.
Bacote is a graduate of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. She holds a master’s degree from Teachers College at Columbia University and a master of fine arts degree from the University of Iowa.
Jennifer Simmons, a member of the faculty at the University of Mississippi since 2002 was named assistant provost. She had been serving as assistant dean for new media in the School of Journalism and New Media at the university.
Simmons earned her bachelor’s degree in elementary education and her master’s degree in higher education from the University of Southern Mississippi.
