A wide shot of a ceramics studio, featuring students working with pottery wheels and other tools.
Portrait of Eddie Chambers, an adult Black man with short gray hair seated againt an orange background.

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Eddie Chambers

Professor

Contact

Bio

Professor Eddie Chambers (he/him) joined the faculty of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the fall 2025 semester. He was previously on the faculty of the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin in 2010, teaching African Diaspora art history, where he was the holder of the David Bruton, Jr. Centennial Professorship in Art History. He received his doctorate in 1998 from Goldsmiths College, University of London, awarded for his thesis ‘Black Visual Arts Activity in England Between 1981–1986: Press and Public Responses’.

He was first an artist, having graduated from art school (Sunderland Polytechnic) in 1983 with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art. His work is included in several collections including Tate Britain, Sheffield Museums, and the Arts Council Collection, London. He spent a considerable number of years as an independent curator, working with many artists including Denzil Forrester, Eugene Palmer, Tam Joseph, Frank Bowling, Permindar Kaur, and Lesley Sanderson. In addition to his exhibition work, he has written extensively about the work of modern and contemporary artists in the United Kingdom and other parts of the world. His articles, essays and peer review texts have been published in a range of magazines and journals, and he has been, for over three decades a contributor to Art Monthly (London). In June 2018 he was appointed an Art Monthly Foundation Honorary Patron, (other patrons being Liam Gillick, Hans Haacke, Mona Hatoum, Alfredo Jaar, and Martha Rosler).

Eddie Chambers has guest-edited a number of magazines and journals, including Critical Interventions, the International Review of African American Art, and several issues of Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art. The most recent issue of Nka he guest-edited was #50, published in May 2022, dedicated to subjects related to African American Artists in the International Arena.

A collection of his articles and essays, titled "Run Through the Jungle" was published by the Institute of International Visual Arts (London) as part of its ‘Annotations’ series in 1999. His book Things Done Change: The Cultural Politics of Recent Black Artists in Britain was published by Rodopi Editions, Amsterdam and New York, 2012, as part of its Cross/Cultures —Readings in the Post/Colonial Literatures in English series. He was the author of Black Artists in British Art: A History Since the 1950s, published in 2014 by I. B. Tauris/Bloomsbury, London and New York. In 2016, I. B. Tauris/Bloomsbury published his book Roots & Culture: Cultural Politics in the Making of Black Britain, a study of Black Britons’ cultural identity formations. His latest book is World is Africa: Writings on Diaspora Art, published by Bloomsbury, 2021.

He was the editor of the Routledge Companion to African American Art History, published in 2019, and the editor of the Routledge Companion to African Diaspora Art History, published in 2024.

He served a three-year term as editor-in-chief of CAA's Art Journal from July 1, 2021, to June 30, 2024.

Courses

Title Department Catalog Term

Description

This class will begin with considerations of African Diaspora identity formations and how such formations and histories relate to the broad subject of the class ¿ African Diaspora art history. We will consider the work of a number of leading artists of the African Diaspora, located throughout the world in geographic regions such as the Americas, Europe and artists emerging out of the continent of Africa itself. With African Diaspora art history being such a relatively recent addition to the canon of art history, pretty much all of the artists we look at in this class will be reflective of the modern and contemporary art history periods.

Artists include Keith Piper, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Charles White, Elizabeth Catlett, Sonia Boyce, Isaac Julien and others whose work can be seen as emerging from a confluence of factors including migration, diaspora, history and identity. The class will use a variety of texts, most frequently catalogue essays relating to artists of the African Diaspora, many of whom are now established figures in exhibitions and biennales. Readings will also include texts by art historians and curators who have worked with, or written about, such artists. The texts will demonstrate the extent to which African Diaspora identity formations are often central to nuanced readings of these artists¿ practices.

Students are required to submit one short `reaction¿ paper each week, plus a short research paper at the end of the semester. The main emphasis of the seminar will be on active class participation and discussion of the artists and their work.

Class Number

1088

Credits

3

Description

This class will begin with considerations of African Diaspora identity formations and how such formations and histories relate to the broad subject of the class ¿ African Diaspora art history. We will consider the work of a number of leading artists of the African Diaspora, located throughout the world in geographic regions such as the Americas, Europe and artists emerging out of the continent of Africa itself. With African Diaspora art history being such a relatively recent addition to the canon of art history, pretty much all of the artists we look at in this class will be reflective of the modern and contemporary art history periods.

Artists include Keith Piper, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Charles White, Elizabeth Catlett, Sonia Boyce, Isaac Julien and others whose work can be seen as emerging from a confluence of factors including migration, diaspora, history and identity. The class will use a variety of texts, most frequently catalogue essays relating to artists of the African Diaspora, many of whom are now established figures in exhibitions and biennales. Readings will also include texts by art historians and curators who have worked with, or written about, such artists. The texts will demonstrate the extent to which African Diaspora identity formations are often central to nuanced readings of these artists¿ practices.

Students are required to submit one short `reaction¿ paper each week, plus a short research paper at the end of the semester. The main emphasis of the seminar will be on active class participation and discussion of the artists and their work.

Class Number

2413

Credits

3

Description

Beginning in the late 18th century and continuing into the 21st century, artists have attempted to create images that represent enslavement and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. This seminar begins with a consideration of the infamous 'plan of a slave ship' by an uncredited British artist and continues through a history of frequently compelling, troubling and engaging images, right up to the present-day. The seminar considers engravings, paintings, sculptures made in different parts of the world and also references images in popular culture, and representations of enslavement in postage stamps, on book covers and so on, with a focus on the work of modern and contemporary artists.
The seminar will use a variety of texts, most frequently catalogue essays relating to artists such as Kara Walker, Godfried Donkor, Keith Piper and others who have taken various aspects of enslavement as subject matter for their work. We will watch extracts of representations of enslavement on television, and film works such as Steve McQueen's '12 Years a Slave' and Quentin Tarantino's 'Django Unchained'. Our readings will also include texts by art historians such as Marcus Wood and academics such as Catherine Hall. The texts will demonstrate the extent to which enslavement has always been, and remains, a gripping though uncomfortable subject.
Students are required to submit one short 'reaction' paper each week, plus a longer 12-15 page research paper at the end of the semester. The main emphasis of the seminar will be on active class participation.

Class Number

2296

Credits

3