Ghana

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 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?

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.

In a break from their work on the forts of the Ghanaian coast, mechanical engineering major Seungju Yeo ’20 learns more about the culture and language of the Ashanti region of modern-day Ghana.

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.

“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.”

"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."

Engineering student Kate Korslund ’20 finally reaches Elmina Castle, home for the field school she her classmates will be spending their summer learning about the historic importance and preservation of these coastal forts.

Hear from eight Rochester students spending this summer at a field school in Ghana. Led by Professors Renato Perucchio, Michael Jarvis, and Chris Muir, the students are studying the engineering, historical, and cultural aspects of the country's historic coastal forts.

On her first days in Ghana, mechanical engineering major Louisa Anderson ‘20 settles in for a summer at a field school near Accra, learning about the history, people – and food.