Amanda Carlson is Assistant Professor of Art History in the Hartford Art School, University of Hartford (West Hartford, Connecticut, USA). As a specialist in African art history, Dr. Carlson writes about topics such as contemporary art, photography, indigenous African writing systems, masquerades, and women's ritual performances. She has conducted extensive research on the arts of the Cross River region in southeastern Nigeria, which will be the topic of her next book. Portions of this research have been published in the journal African Arts ("Calabar Carnival: A Trinidadian Festival Returns to Africa," 2010), within Inscribing Meaning: Writing and Graphic Systems in African Art (Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art, 2007), and in African Folklore, an Encyclopedia (Routledge 2004).