Hakimah Abdul-Fattah

HAKIMAH ABDUL-FATTAH, then a graduate student at University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was approved funding in September 2023 to aid research on “Living in History, Narrating Place: Heritage Creation and Worldmaking at Saint-Louis and Gorée Island,” supervised by Dr. Richard M. Leventhal. This research examines how stories of place activate visions for the future. The grantee completed twelve months of fieldwork in Senegal which included over fifty long form interviews and participant observation with heritage workers and residents of Goree and Saint-Louis islands. Key findings for this research included the various local and national changes to the historical narratives of these two national and internationally recognized heritage sites as well as contested accounts of their significance in the transatlantic slave trade. Through life history style interviews and participation in arts and cultural events my dissertation project has expanded to encompass the contested ideas of belonging at these two islands and their mobilization in political debates and ideologies on aspirations for the future. This fieldwork has touched on local and global processes of racialization as well as the political, social and economic influence of the transatlantic slave history in national and international heritage production as well as growing anti-colonial policies across the region.