Ghana Study Abroad

Dr. Miriam DeCosta-Willis, of Memphis and Washington, D.C., participated in African and African American Studies’ 2009 Ghana Study Abroad program.  Although Dr. Bond has accompanied the group as AAAS director, DeCosta-Willis’s participation was the first by a non-student.  But the experience of being the “first” in something related to the University of Memphis is not new to Dr. DeCosta-Willis.  A graduate of Wellesley College with a Ph.D. in Romance Languages from Johns Hopkins University, DeCosta-Willis joined the faculty of Memphis State University in 1967.  She was the university’s first African American faculty member.  She later served as professor of Spanish and chairperson of the Department of Romance Languages at Howard University (Washington, D.C.).  She has also taught at LeMoyne-Owen College, George Mason University, and the University of Maryland, from which she retired in 1999. Read more about her trip in the Commercial Appeal.

DeCosta-Willis’s publications include Notable Black Memphians (2008), ErotiqueNoire/Black Erotica, with Reginald Martin and Roseann Bell, (1992), Daughters of the Diaspora: Afra-Hispanic Authors (2003), The Memphis Diary of Ida B. Wells (1995), and Singular Like a Bird: The Art of Nancy Morejon (1999).  She served for ten years as an associate editor of SAGE: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women. She is co-founder and a former chairperson of the Memphis Black Writers Workshop, and has served on the Memphis Arts Council advisory committee and as a review panelist for the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Dr. Miriam DeCosta-Willis and Dr. Dennis Laumann. 

DeCosta-Willis’s article, “Pilgrimage to an Ancestral Land:Ghana,” appeared recently in Chicken Bones: A Journal for Literary and Artistic African-American Themes.

For more information visit the Ghana website.

MORE INDIVIDUAL ACCOUNTS OF THE GHANA EXPERIENCE.

A limited number of study abroad grants are available. Submit an application.