Research at the Crossroads: Inside the Exhibition Caravans of Gold

Experience The Block Museum of Art exhibition Caravans of Gold through the perspectives of Art History PhD candidate Sarah Estrella, Archaeological Anthropology PhD candidate Dela Kuma, and Cultural Anthropology Archaeology PhD candidate Mariam Taher. The three scholars will discuss their research on subjects of identity, nationalisms, gender, and language and translation through a focus on objects within the exhibition, including a fifteenth-century Jewish prayer book.

Sarah Estrella is a third-year PhD student in the Department of Art History specializing in modern and contemporary art. She focuses on art made in Portugal and Lusophone Africa during the 1960s and 1970s, and is currently researching how artists negotiated and articulated their visions for the future before, during and after the anti-colonial liberation struggles. 
 

Dela Kuma is a third-year PhD student in the Department of Anthropology. Her research investigates the relationship between domestic economies and global market economies in South-Eastern Ghana, Amedeka with the transition to the Legitimate Trade in the 19th century.

Mariam Taher is a second-year PhD student in the Department of Anthropology. She is currently learning Siwi, the Amazigh language spoken in Siwa, in Egypt's Western Desert, where she is researching how gender, language, and space effect people's everyday experiences.