CHERYL FINLEY

The researcher discussed “roots tourism”, in which visits to historic sites (such as the castles in Ghana, which served the slave trade and the “pelourinhos” in Salvador) contribute to establish the cultural identity of Afro-descendants. A visiting Assistant Professor of History of Art and Culture in the Africana Studies and Research Center, at Cornell University, Cheryl Finley is also a curator, consultant, art critic, and essayist. Her main themes are photography, African-American art, and cultural tourism. Finley has received a doctorate in African-American studies and History of Art from Yale University. She is the author of several articles and essays, including “Authenticating dungeons, whitewashing castles: the former sites of the slave trade on the Ghanaian coast”, on cultural tourism in Ghana, and "Committed to memory: the slave ship icon in the Black Atlantic imagination”, which analyses the engraving “Description of a slave ship” (eighteenth century), a central piece to the abolitionist movement, and an icon of the “Black Atlantic” history. Cheryl Finley is working on papers that should be published over the next years discussing the Black Atlantic and the Cuban-American artist Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons.

CHERYL FINLEY
Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), USA. Lives and works in New York region.








ESSAY - "AUTHENTICATING DUNGEONS, WHITEWASHING CASTLES" (PDF)