Recent News

Student holding camera stands in front of a case full of human skulls at a dark tourism destination.
January 19, 2023

The ethics of dark tourism

Julia Granato crisscrossed Europe to study human bone collection and display sites. Now she’s pondering what it means to display and visit human remains.

three people pose for a photo with a surveyor tool.
December 3, 2019

How do you bring a castle home with you?

How do you convey a 91,000-square-foot castle with more than 160 rooms on the Ghana coast, back to Rochester, so at any time you could take a virtual tour as if you were really there? Or study the castle’s structure brick by brick?

a long canoe launching into a bay in Elmina, viewed from the turret of Fort Amsterdam
July 2, 2018

Like a fish out of water (with a side of banku)

The goal of this entry isn’t to try and definitively answer these questions, but rather to discuss how I got my feet planted. The first step was to acknowledge that I am not here to be comfortable.

African masks hanging on a wall in Ghana
June 28, 2018

Memorable Ghana

“As a student in the digital media studies department, it amazed me to see how the different tools and methods of studying the structures added to our understanding of how the forts were built and how they might have changed over time.”

group of students outside a castle
June 25, 2018

Surveying the castle is ‘an honorable mission’

"Since arriving at Elmina, my heart has been flooded with sorrowful thoughts that fly back to the colonial period, when elegant pieces of architecture such as Elmina Castle were built to house pillaged materials such as gold and ivory, as well as human beings."