Duke in Ghana
May 17 to June 30, 2010*
* See the Program Schedule page for a more detailed itinerary, including information regarding travel to and from the program site.
The Departments of Cultural Anthropology and African and African American Studies, in conjunction with the Duke University Global Education Office for Undergraduates offer a six-week, two-course program on culture and life in Ghana.
Located on the west coast of Africa, Ghana is a culturally and geographically diverse country with rich artistic traditions and a complex history of intercontinental trade (in gold, slaves, and cocoa), British colonialism, and Pan-African nationalist social movements. Heralded as a political and economic success story upon its independence in 1957, democratic Ghana has since faced the challenges and undergone the hardships of a developing country on the poorest continent. Ghanaians are gracious, generous and immediately likeable people who, upon more extended acquaintance, reveal complex and interesting differences from Americans.
The program is based at the University of Ghana at Legon, just outside the capital city, Accra. Courses are taught by the program director and Ghanaian faculty and focus on Ghanaian politics, history, social life, dance, music and art. Field trips complement course work. Students travel as a group through various parts of the country, crossing from rainforest to dry savannah, visiting cities, coastal fishing towns, and rural farming villages. Students also tour and learn about the former slave forts at Cape Coast and Elmina, and museums and craft villages in and around Kumasi, capital of the former Ashanti Empire.
Depending upon their interests and individual research projects, students have the opportunity to take regular dance and drumming classes; attend live performances and a traditional festival; visit markets, schools, museums, waterfalls, a monkey reserve, a prayer mountain, a traditional herbalist, a chief’s palace, cocoa and textile factories, social service projects, the Volta River Hydroelectric Dam, Mole National Park (a game reserve), and more. The 2010 summer Ghana program is directed by Katya Wesolowski, an anthropologist and dancer and a Lecturing Fellow in the Thompson Writing Program at Duke.
