In this episode, we delve into the names of enslaved Africans as recorded on baptism and slave registers, exploring their significance within Caribbean history and family genealogy. Professor Kwasi Konadu joins us to discuss the meanings behind these names and their representations of African identity in the Caribbean context. Join us as we uncover the importance of these names in understanding both heritage and the legacies of colonialism. This episode offers valuable insights into the overlapping narratives of personal and collective family histories, shedding light on the cultural heritage of the Caribbean.

Professor Kwasi Konadu -                                                                                              Bio

Kwasi Konadu is an author, scholar, educator, writer, editor, and historian.

Currently Kwasi Konadu is John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Endowed Chair and Professor at Colgate University, where he teaches courses in African history and on worldwide African histories and cultures. With extensive archival and field research in West Africa, Europe, Brazil, the Caribbean, and North America, his writings focus on African and African diasporic histories, as well as major themes in world history. He is the author of Our Own Way in This Part of the World: Biography of an African Community, Culture, and Nation (Duke University Press, 2019), (with Clifford Campbell) The Ghana Reader: History, Culture, Politics (Duke University Press, 2016), Transatlantic Africa, 1440-1888 (Oxford University Press, 2014), The Akan Diaspora in the Americas (Oxford University Press, 2010), among other books.

A father foremost, Konadu is also a healer (Tanɔ ɔbosomfoɔ) who studied with his grandfather in Jamaica and then in Takyiman (central Ghana) as well as a publisher of scholarly books about African world histories and cultures through Diasporic Africa Press. His life work is devoted to knowledge production and the worldwide communities and struggles of peoples of African ancestry.

Website: https://kwasikonadu.info/

Book: https://www.amazon.ca/Transatlantic-Africa-1440-1888-Kwasi-Konadu/dp/0199764875

                                                                                                                                       #african identity #namesoftheenslaved #caribbeanheritage #genealogy #heritage