In terms of content I teach, the documentation and 3D tours of the House of Slaves (Île de Gorée, Sénégal), the Cape Coast Castle (Ghana), and the Elmina Castle (Ghana) would furnish a useful anchoring point in discussions of the transatlantic slave trade, e.g., in an American literature course (alongside Olaudah Equiano’s Narrative) or, in a modern African fiction course, in tandem with Ben Okri’s Last Gift of the Major Artists. 

Nancy Tallas has already discussed the location and purpose of the House of Slaves, so I will comment on the Elmina Castle. Built by the Portuguese in 1482, Elmina Castle is the oldest European structure erected south of the Sahara. It is located just west of Cape Coast. Initially designed to secure the Portuguese a foothold in the gold trade, it became a center for their slaving operations. Harold French offers a description of the space on pages 233-34 of Born in Blackness that supplements the images from Zamani Project. It would be interesting to discuss how viewpoint and mobility work in these architectural spaces and to compare/contrast to the structure of the hold in slaving ships.

In contrast to these European-built structures, I was particularly struck by the Sudano-Sahelian architecture of Mali’s Great Mosque of Djenné. I would be interested to incorporate analysis of the mosque—its form and use of materials—in a course I teach on environment and literature.