Recent News
Historic Bermuda reshapes our understanding of colonial America
Smithsonian Magazine highlights the role of a Rochester historian and archaeologist in unearthing Bermuda’s colonial origins.
Unearthing the history of Bermuda’s old capital
Each spring, Rochester undergraduates conduct archaeological fieldwork, unearthing and preserving Bermuda’s rich history.
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.
Ghana field school immerses students in ancient forts—and the legacies of slavery
For the last three summers, Rochester undergraduates have worked to analyze and preserve the ancient forts along the coast of Ghana, while exploring the historical and cultural context of the structures they study.
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?
Students thrive at the intersections of engineering, computer science, and humanities
Seniors Melissa Wen, Nathan Nickerson, and Jarrod Young are this year's winners of the Wells Award, given each year to high-achieving students in the Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences who also excel in the humanities.
Fate of historic forts rests in connecting them to the communities around them
The most help I can do for the preservation and heritage of Elmina castle, Fort Amsterdam, and the other slave castles along of the coast of Ghana is to teach others how they can study and care for the castle tomorrow.
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.
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.”
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."