The University of Louisiana at Lafayette will host Fulbright Fellow Dr. Wilhelmina J. Donkoh, senior lecturer at Kwame Nkrumah University in Kumasi, Ghana, for a public lecture on Thursday at 6 p.m. in the Ernest J. Gaines Center in Dupré Library. The event is free and open to the public.
In her talk, entitled “Remembering Slavery in Ghana and the United States,” Donkoh will share her insights into how individuals, museums, and communities on both sides of the Atlantic remember and represent a shared past involving slavery and slave trading. She will discuss the ways in which legacies of the Transatlantic slave trade and slavery have shaped connections among African populations and those in the African diaspora.
“ We are most fortunate to have Dr. Donkoh, one of the leading authorities on slavery and its legacies, visit our campus and community. Dr. Donkoh is an expert on the memory of slavery, family relations, and public history, and brings a unique perspective of a scholar who has conducted research on both sides of the Atlantic,” said Dr. Ted Maris-Wolf, UL Lafayette assistant professor of history and organizer of the event.
Donkoh is the co-author of The Just King: The Story of Osei Tutu Kwame Asibe Bonsu and currently a Fulbright fellow at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA. She has been featured in international conferences on slavery, has appeared in documentary films regarding slavery and its abolition, and has chronicled the importance of traditional governance structures in dealing with modern challenges like HIV-AIDS in Africa.
This lecture is sponsored by SGA Lyceum Committee, the Department of History, and the Ernest J. Gaines Center and Edith Garland Dupré Library.
For more information, contact Ted Maris-Wolf at (337) 482-5427 or tedmw@louisiana.edu.