iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Elizabeth @afroartnerd.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

American Sublime was everything and more. Amy Sherald is a genius.

An art historian on a yellow dress posing with an Amy Sherald painting of a woman in a polka dot dress

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Elizabeth @afroartnerd.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

My review of Tiffany Barber’s Undesirability and Her Sisters is in the Spring/Summer 2026 issue of Woman’s Art Journal.

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Elizabeth @afroartnerd.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

I just taught my last class of the semester.

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Elizabeth @afroartnerd.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

I got my Alison Saar domino set!

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Elizabeth @afroartnerd.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

As we close Black History Month, I want to share some exciting news: I earned tenure and promotion to Associate Professor. The girl who dreamed of being like Whitley Gilbert, is now a tenured art historian at an HBCU.

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Elizabeth @afroartnerd.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

enslavement. Her definition of Womanism expanded boundaries for me in thinking about Black women and feminism. The Color Purple is one of my favorite books. In addition to being an essayist and novelist, Walker is also a poet and wrote one of my favorites, which I’ll share here: #BHM

Text of Alice Walker’s poem “Be Nobody’s Darling”

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Elizabeth @afroartnerd.bsky.social · 08/02/2026

The art of Robert Pruitt is a portal to Black histories and Black futures. Free immediately captivated me, and I used it as the cover for my first book. He depicts Black people with such beauty and care. #BHM

Book cover: Charting the Afrofuturist Imaginary in African American Art

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Elizabeth @afroartnerd.bsky.social · 07/02/2026

The seventh day of Black History Month is also my birthday, so I want to share MY (BLACK/ART) HISTORY: WHY I BECAME AN ART HISTORIAN elizabethcarmelhamilton.blogspot.com/2016/06/my-b... #BHM

Video stills of A Different World with Whitley and an artist

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Elizabeth @afroartnerd.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

Carter G. Woodson chose February for Black History Week initially because of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglas’s birthdays. Now that we celebrate the whole month, we can see all the Black luminaries who were also born in February. #BHM

Alison Saar’s Grow’d: a seated figure with cotton hair hi holding cotton and a sickle

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Elizabeth @afroartnerd.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

On the fourth day of Black History Month, I am still enamored by Pierre Bennu’s Black Moses Barbie. The faux commercials follow Harriet Tubman on a quest to free enslaved people. The skits are witty and challenge how we remember the heroine in public memory. youtu.be/lnZagD_jBH4?...

Video still of Pierre Bennu’s Black Moses Barbie

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Elizabeth @afroartnerd.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

Getting my Phillis Wheatley stamps yesterday made me want to focus on her today. Her frontispiece in Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773) was drawn by Scipio Moorhead, a Black artist who was trained by his enslaver. #BHM

Frontispiece of Phillis Wheatley by Scipio Moorhead

Phillis Wheatley stamp by Kerry James Marshall

Book cover: The Art of Remembering by Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw

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Elizabeth @afroartnerd.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

I got my Phillis Wheatley stamps! #BHM

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Elizabeth @afroartnerd.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

David Huffman, MLK (2007) One of the reasons I fell in love with art history was because of the storytelling. Artists convey compelling narratives visually. Therefore art can be a way to tell Black histories and Black futures. David Huffman’s MLK entranced me, because it does both. #BHM

David Huffman’s MLK. Traumanauts scale a mountain with a casket.

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Elizabeth @afroartnerd.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

On Langston Hughes’s birthday, I share this timeless poem.

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Elizabeth @afroartnerd.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

On the first day of the one hundredth year of Black History Month, I am thinking of the tremendous legacy of Carter G. Woodson, its founder. His philosophies, which were expounded upon by Jarvis Givens, guide my teaching of a diverse population of students at an HBCU. #BHM

Book cover: The MisEducation of the Negro by Carter G. Woodson

Book cover: Fugitive Pedagogy by Jarvis Givens

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Elizabeth @afroartnerd.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

Sanford & Son is my comfort show — the one I watch when I just want to veg and chill. Lamont Goes African is my favorite episode. Rest in peace Demond Wilson.

Video still from Lamont Goes African from Sanford and Son.

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Elizabeth @afroartnerd.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

Happy Birthday to Jean-Michel Basquiat, born on this day in 1960. I find myself mourning his death and imagining who he could have been if he hadn’t died in 1988. I believe his prolific art practice was him reckoning with his own mortality. (Portraits by James Van Der Zee, 1982)

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Elizabeth @afroartnerd.bsky.social · 03/12/2025

My top artists/ albums of 2025:

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Elizabeth @afroartnerd.bsky.social · 16/09/2025

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Elizabeth @afroartnerd.bsky.social · 07/09/2025

Painter Jacob Lawrence was born on this day in 1917. Here I am at the New Orleans Museum of Art with one of his paintings from the Black Orpheus exhibition.

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Elizabeth @afroartnerd.bsky.social · 01/09/2025

Don’t forget about the Feminist Art History Conference! Access to prerecorded presentations starts now for registered participants.

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Elizabeth @afroartnerd.bsky.social · 18/07/2025

On the 25th anniversary of Who Is Jill Scott, I can’t put into words how much this album means to me. When I was an 18 year old newly-wed military wife isolated in Wyoming, Jill helped me come into myself. I still have the original CD, which I had on repeat for years.

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Elizabeth @afroartnerd.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

I got the 15th anniversary vinyl of the ArchAndroid. This is one of my favorite albums. It got me through some grueling commutes in grad school.

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Elizabeth @afroartnerd.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

Check out this review of my book in CAA Reviews: www.caareviews.org/reviews/4288

Book cover of Charting the Afrofuturist Imaginary in African American Art: The Black Female Fantastic by Elizabeth Carmel Hamilton

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Elizabeth @afroartnerd.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

With @ysolstar.bsky.social after our presentation at the Africana Digital Humanities Convening…

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Elizabeth @afroartnerd.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

Elizabeth Catlett was born on this day in 1915. Here I am with Mother and Child at the New Orleans Museum of Art.

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Elizabeth @afroartnerd.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

I’ll be presenting on Africana Digital Storytelling. I hope to see you there!

Africana Digital Humanities Convening in Atlanta on April 15-17, 2025.

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Elizabeth @afroartnerd.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

My Gramma would have been 92 years old today. I remember her by playing the songs she recorded in the late 1950s, early 1960s. She was also a poet. It’s not lost on me that she was born in the same season as so many other divas: Aretha Franklin, Sarah Vaughn, and Chaka Khan.

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Elizabeth @afroartnerd.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

“What's the world for you if you can't make it up the way you want it?” — Toni Morrison, Jazz

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Elizabeth @afroartnerd.bsky.social · 25/01/2025

@ravynnkamia.bsky.social posted her Lego typewriter and I knew I had to have one.

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Elizabeth @afroartnerd.bsky.social · 31/12/2024

I surpassed my goal, although I was hoping to read more fiction. I totaled 61% nonfiction and 39% fiction. I will be more intentional in 2025.

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Elizabeth @afroartnerd.bsky.social · 25/12/2024

I made this print about 20 years ago, when I was a BFA student. It is a solar print that uses the intaglio method. The image is an old photo of my Mother with a heart charm sewn on, representing her two heart transplants. When I started my PhD program, I abandoned my art-making practice.

Intaglio print of a little girl with heart charm sewn on.

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Elizabeth @afroartnerd.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

Benny Andrews was born on this day in 1930. He was an activist, who founded the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition, USAF veteran, and alumnus of Fort Valley State University.

Benny Andrews seated in his studio among his paintings.

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Elizabeth @afroartnerd.bsky.social · 17/09/2024

Bluesky now has over 10 million users, and I was #1,056,715!

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Elizabeth @afroartnerd.bsky.social · 06/07/2024

My non-writing, summer project: a quilt!

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Elizabeth @afroartnerd.bsky.social · 20/06/2024

With Simone Leigh’s Brick House at the Legacy Sites Freedom Monument Sculpture Park

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Elizabeth @afroartnerd.bsky.social · 30/05/2024

I got a portrait bust of Ida B. Wells 😊

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Elizabeth @afroartnerd.bsky.social · 31/03/2024

Alma Thomas, Resurrection (1966)

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Elizabeth @afroartnerd.bsky.social · 15/11/2023

Radcliffe Bailey was communing with the ancestors long before he transitioned today: Until I Die/Dat Returnal Day (1997). This work feels ominously prescient.

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Elizabeth @afroartnerd.bsky.social · 01/10/2023

I’m returning to this text that I haven’t read since undergrad…

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