Ghana Slave Dungeon Project

Faculty from the Center for Africana Studies and Culture (CASC) in the IU School of Liberal Arts in Indianapolis lead critical explorations of the role of structural racism through racialized slavery in altering the collective memories of both persons of African and European descent to establish and uphold structures and conditions of inequalities (in education, health, and criminal justice) transnationally, especially in Africa and the U.S.

Drawing on the slave dungeons in Cape Coast and Elmina, Ghana, as critical sites of data, he integrates social science methods with historical approaches to extract the data within these heritage sites. By so doing, he critically observes and analyzes the architectural design of these edifices to visualize structural workings of racism and the pathways that they are embodied and transmitted into individuals and communities’ realities with material and physical consequences that are visible through health, educational, and sentencing disparities. His work unpacks to the role of racism, through the transatlantic slave trade, slavery, and colonialism, in disrupting the cultural and health practices of indigenous Africans and creating structural and environmental conditions and cultural processes that generate and distribute problems unevenly.