Cultural memory | The Harriet Tubman Institute

Erragab Eljanhaoui

rebsl — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 19:08:50 +0000

Erragab Eljanhaoui is a Ph.D. candidate at the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences at Ibn Zohr University in Agadir, Morocco, and a Fulbright scholar at Salisbury University in Maryland, USA. Eljanhaoui’s focus includes Barbary captivity narratives, desert studies, postcolonialism, posthumanism, ecocriticism, and nomadism. With his background in comparative literature studies, he challenges how the Bedouin nomads of the Atlantic Sahara are portrayed in various texts across different genres. Eljanhaoui has presented at numerous national and international conferences in Morocco, Italy, England, and Turkey. He has also published articles on the Sahara and its nomads in international journals.

Keywords: Barbary Captivity Narratives, Nomadism, Postcolonial Sahara, Posthuman Desert, Sahrawi Culture, Cultural Memory

Daniel Richardson

rebsl — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 16:04:54 +0000

Daniel Richardson is a Ghanaian filmmaker and multimedia professional with over a decade of experience in television and video production. He is fascinated by the African story and narratives that have the potential to positively impact humanity. He holds a BFA in Film and Television Production from the National Film and Television Institute (NAFTI), Ghana, and an MA in Media Management from the Ghana Institute of Journalism (GIJ). He is currently pursuing an MFA in Film at �첥��Ƶ, where his research and creative practice explore the intersections of identity, history, and memory. His current project, A Symbol of Remembrance, engages with audiovisual archives through an essayistic and experimental lens, mobilizing Sankofa both as a cultural symbol of return and recovery and as a framework to interrogate the politics of naming and renaming public space in diasporic and postcolonial contexts.

Keywords: Cultural memory, Diaspora studies, Urban cultural geography, Public memory, Postcolonial identity, Symbolic politics, Essay film

Gabriela A.K.I. Sealy

rebsl — Thu, 08 Feb 2024 20:14:23 +0000

Gabriela Sealy is a researcher, curator, and maker who works at the seams of memory, material, and care. Rooted in the textile traditions of the African diaspora, her work stitches together oral history, archival fragments, and creative practice to trace what survives and who carries it. She recently completed her MA in Art History and Visual Culture at �첥��Ƶ, where her Major Research Project, The Black Pollera: Stitches of Survival, Threads of Legacy, explored the pollera de Congo as both a garment and a living archive of Afro-Panamanian matriarchal knowledge.

Gabriela’s practice moves between storytelling and scholarship, threading the personal with the political. Guided by the hands of those who came before, she uses cloth not just as a medium, but as a method—to touch the past, to imagine otherwise, and to hold space for what has been passed down. A SSHRC-funded scholar, she brings her training in curatorial work, conservation, and cultural heritage to projects that honour community, creativity, and intergenerational legacy.

Keywords: Black feminist material culture, Afro-Caribbean textile traditions, Research-creation, Decolonial methodologies, Cultural memory, Embodied knowledge, Oral history, Diasporic storytelling, Textile as archive, Intergenerational care, Visual culture, Ancestral knowledge, Craft-based resistance, Community-engaged art, Afro-Panamanian identity