People

Speakers and Presenters

Slave Traders in the Family: Autoarchaeology at Christiansborg Castle (Ghana)

In this talk, I introduce ‘autoarchaeology’, an experiential, work-in-progress approach to heritage work. Autoarchaeology Is a conceptual framework where the subject positions of researcher, practitioner, and direct descendant are held by the same person. It foregrounds the Self. Prioritizing direct descendants’ narratives, as well as the histories they reconstruct, I argue, constitutes a new epistemological direction by privileging direct descendants of slave traders as knowledge producers, impacting and providing nuance to understandings of key historical moments and legacies. I also argue, it stands committed to the politics of inclusion and recognition, as well as active community engagement with the past, and in so doing, comprises a more ethical, democratic, inclusive and social justice means to decolonizing the study of the material past. I illustrate this point referencing an autoarchaeology of Christiansborg Castle in Ghana – a UNESCO World Heritage site, former seat of Danish and British colonial government and Office of the President of the Republic of Ghana – since we, as researchers and direct descendants of Eurafrican slave traders unearth the histories and legacies of the Danish transatlantic slave trade.

LaShondra R. Hemphill known artistically as RyNea Soul, is a music producer, deejay, arts educator, visual artist, and a U.S. Department of State cultural arts ambassador of hip-hop with Next Level, an initiative of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the Meridian International Center. Born and raised in Birmingham, AL, RyNea Soul reflects the depth and range of the South in her music as she notes, “there is no American musical genre that the South hasn’t directly or indirectly shaped”. She is the Founder, Executive Director, and Lead Music Production Instructor at The Initiative for Creative Arts, a non-profit organization that uses music production/tech, emceeing, and spoken word art as a tool to inspire, unite, and empower youth as artists, entrepreneurs, and advocates for change in their communities. She is the production half of the hip-hop duo the Boom Bap Babies with emcee/poet BeShaun Levelle (Shaun Judah), a duo rooted in self-love, freedom, and blackness.

She has guest lectured at universities around the U.S. and presented at international conferences including, the National Women’s Studies Association, International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, Allied Media Conference, and Women in Hip-Hop Conference on hip-hop feminism, hip-hop education, youth development in music, restorative justice and hip-hop, Gender, music and popular culture and the Black Queer aesthetic in popular music. LaShondra is an advisor for the McWane Science Center’s hip-hop exhibit “Dropping Science”, an exhibit first of its kind in Alabama that will highlight the intersections of hip hop and science.

Scholar, Writer, and Performer, Chamara Jewel Kwakye is an Academic Specialist in the Department of African American and African Studies at Michigan State University. Daughter of the African diaspora, Dr. Kwakye was born and raised in South Central Los Angeles. With matrilineage from Crossett, Arkansas and patrilineage from Akropong, Ghana she attributes the richness of both Southern Black culture and West African culture to her dynamic interests, her outlook on community and solidarity, her approach to art and creativity and in part her success.  She holds a Masters in Post-Secondary Administration and Student Affairs from the University of Southern California and a PhD in Education Policy Studies with a concentration in African American Studies and a graduate certificate in Gender & Women’s Studies from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.  

Her research interest is guided by Black Feminism and centers the voices of Black Girls and Women and their artistic and creative response to White Supremacy. She has published poems, starred in performances, written articles, co-edited a book and served in various artistic capacities that highlight her investment in artistic creativity as a tool in fighting oppression. She believes Black girls and women survival and wellness should be central in organizing against structural oppression. 

As an interdisciplinary scholar and instructor Dr. Kwakye has taught various courses that interweave a number of fields including African American and African Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies, Education Policy Studies and History. In AAAS she is excited to teach introductory and exploratory courses as she finds that’s where students are not only introduced to new ideas, readings and material but is also where students’ new intellectual passions are sparked. 

Prior to joining AAAS at MSU, Dr. Kwakye served as The Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Illinois in the Department of African American Studies and as faculty at the University of Kentucky and Georgia State University. In her role as Academic Specialist in AAAS at MSU Dr. Kwakye’s goal is to serve AAAS students in a way that affirms their agency, that inspires them to develop and take seriously their intellectual curiosities, and model how their intellectual curiosities should be in service to the collective. Ultimately, she wants the students she serves to be whole, recognize their talent and their divine gifts and to leave MSU with a curious mind and their spirits intact.

Belinda S. Moses is a direct descendant of British and free black Jamaica colonists and people of African descent who were enslaved. Belinda, who identifies as African American, was gifted a rich oral and documented family history by her parents, but there were gaps, errors and unknowns. Beyond stories about free black status in Jamaica (well before slave trade ended there in 1807) and some manumitted ancestors in colonial Maryland, enslaver origins were almost never discussed. Family lineage was described “no one white for 200 years”.

After her mother’s death in 2007, Belinda delved deeply into memoir writing, organizing the family archive and researching her ancestry. To provide momentum, she hosted a weekly memoir writers group at a local library for three years. Twelve chapters resulted and many more gaps in history were revealed.

Inspired by writings, such as Finding Charity’s Folk, by Jessica Millward, Belinda, a sixth generation, great-granddaughter of Charity Folks Bishop, left her twenty-five year career in health care consulting and began to document her family history and create profiles of her ancestors to inform future generations. Belinda engages published datasets, archival content, online genealogy and social media tools, and DNA testing to further validate claims and fill gaps in her family tree.

Belinda has a bachelor’s of fine arts degree in painting and master’s in communications from the University of Washington, Seattle.

Belinda and her husband, Mark Mauren, built and live on a nearly sustainable farm in Puyallup, Washington. They share four adult children and four grandchildren.

Ms. Liberty Rashad is an educator, community organizer and entrepreneur.  A direct descendant of Charity Folks on the Bishop side, Ms. Rashad was born in New York City and grew up surrounded by activism and community service. Today she carries a deep passion for history, art, and culture. Following in her ancestors footsteps of entrepreneurship,  she owns and operates the Huckabuck Village residential community in New Orleans.  In Maine, she tends to the 93-year Bishop family home in honor of the legacy she, her children, and her twelve grandchildren have inherited from her great grandfather, prominent Episcopal leader, Reverend Hutchens Chew Bishop.

Alex Borucki is a historian of african diaspora, the early modern Atlantic World, and colonial Latin America. His book, From Shipmates to Soldiers: Emerging Black Identities in the Río de la Plata focuses on the impact of mutual experiences and social networks on identity formation among Africans and their descendants. This work casts new light on the thousands of Africans who arrived in Montevideo and Buenos Aires at the peak of the slave trade.

Borucki, along with UC Santa Cruz historian Gregory O’Malley, led the development of the Intra-American Slave Trade Database, which tracks records of slave voyages within the Americas – stretching from Boston to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and involving both the Atlantic and Pacific coast. The database is hosted by Slave Voyages, one of the most utilized resources in the digital humanities, which illuminates the ubiquity of the slave trade from the 16th century to the 19th century and is home to thousands of records on slave voyages from Africa to the Americas.

Organizers

Professor Millward is the Black Thriving Inclusive Excellence Term Chair at UC Irvine. An Associate Professor in the Department of History and Core Faculty member of African American Studies,  Dr. Millward’s first book, Finding Charity’s Folk: Enslaved and Free Black women in Maryland was published as part of the Race in the Atlantic World series, Athens: University of Georgia Press (2015).   An award winning scholar, she has published in the Journal of African American History, the Journal of Women’s History, Frontiers, Souls and the Women’s History Review as well as Op-eds in Chronicle of Higher Education, The Feministwire.com and The Conversation.com.  Millward is currently working on a book length project that discusses African American women’s experiences with sexual assault and intimate partner violence in the late 19th century.