A Ghanaian Professor Ato Quayson has been appointed head of the Department of English at Stanford University, one of America’s top Universities.
According toBen Dotsei Malor, a Chief Editor at Dailies, UN News at United Nations, the Ghanaian professor will assume his new position as Chair of Stanford’s English Department in September 2021.
Professor Quayson who was Chief Examiner in English of the International Baccalaureate and chair of the judges for the 2015 Etisalat Prize for Literature bagged a First Class Honours degree at the University of Ghana, in English and Arabic and proceeded to the University of Cambridge, UK, where he completed his Ph.D.
From Cambridge, he went to Oxford University, where he held a Junior Research Fellowship at Wolfson College, before returning to Cambridge to become a Reader in Commonwealth and Postcolonial Literature in the Faculty of English from 1995-2005.
Prior to Stanford, he was Professor of African and Postcolonial Literature at New York University (2017-2019) and Professor of English and inaugural Director of the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies at the University of Toronto (2005-2017). In 2016 he was appointed University Professor at the University of Toronto, the highest distinction that the university can bestow on any individual.
The African Giant has written and published extensively, including six monographs and 8 edited volumes. Some of his works include; An Anthology of Literary Criticism and Theory (with Tejumola Olaniyan, 2007), Fathers and Daughters: An Anthology of Exploration (2008), Labor Migration, Human Trafficking, and Multinational Corporations, (with Antonela Arhin, 2012).
His most recent work is Tragedy and Postcolonial Literature, published by Cambridge University Press, 2021. British Academy, and the Royal Society of Canada.
The African continent is filled with diverse talents and intellectual capabilities, Professor Quayson is an excellent example of this hallmark of Africans.
