About the University of Ghana and Participating Faculty
 The University of Ghana, located in Legon, a university town nine miles south of the capital city of Accra on the West African coast, was established in 1948 as an affiliate college of the University of London. Since 1961, the University of Ghana has been an independent academic institution awarding its own degrees.
With a student population of nearly 24,000, the University of Ghana is the largest and oldest of five public universities in Ghana. The university offers a wide range of academic programs including the arts and sciences, agriculture, business, engineering, law, medicine, nursing and social studies. Participating faculty members include educators and major literary figures of the country.
For more information on the University of Ghana, visit their web site by clicking here.
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Ama Ata Aidoo is a novelist, playwright and leading figure in the struggle for Ghanaian national liberation and self-determination. She first gained recognition in 1965 with the publication of her play The Dilemma of a Ghost, which explored the conflict between traditional culture and Western values. From 1974 to 1975, she served as a consulting professor to the Washington bureau of the Phelps-Stokes Fund's Ethnic Studies Program. Aidoo returned to Ghana in 1983 to serve as Minister of Education until 1984.
Aidoo's books explore the encounter between African and European cultures and the psychological impact of post-colonialism on women. They include No Sweetness Here (1970), Our Sister Killjoy: Or, Reflections from a Black-Eyed Squint (1977), Someone Talking to Sometime (1986), a children's book, The Eagle and the Chickens (1987) and Changes (1991), which won the Commonwealth Writer's Prize for Africa. Her second play Anowa (1970), based on the legend of a girl who defied her parents in the choice of her husband, was produced in Britain in 1991. |
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The Ghanaian poet and educator Kofi Anyidoho is a Professor of Literature and Director of the School of Performing Arts. A graduate of the University of Ghana, Legon, he earned a master's degree from Indiana University, and the doctorate from the University of Texas.
Anyidoho's poetry, best seen in performance, explores public, political, and social themes, rooted in the traditions and culture of Ghana's Ewe people. His examination of the plight of post-independent Africa is marked by indignation at the rape, brutalization, and dehumanization that he perceives as the hallmark of European colonization of Africa. His five published books of poetry include Elegy for the Revolution (1978), A Harvest of Our Dreams (1985), Earthchild (1985), and AncestralLogic and Caribbean Blues (1993). His most recent book, PraiseSong (2002), draws on Ewe verbal art as a critical source of the cultural and philosophical expression of an African community.
A fellow of the International Academy of Poets, Anyidoho was named Poet of the Year for Ghana and won the Ghana Book Award as well as other major prizes, including the Valco Fund Literary Award, the Langston Hughes Prize, the BBC Arts and Africa Poetry Award, and the Fania Kruger Fellowship for Poetry of Social Vision. |
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Poet, novelist, and critic Kofi Awoonor produces and hosts the African Heritage Television Series and teaches creative writing at the University of Ghana. Awoonor received the National Book Council Award for poetry in 1979. In 1985 he was appointed Ghana's ambassador to Brazil and in 1989, ambassador to Cuba; he has also served as Ghana's representative to the United Nations.
His grandmother, a dirge singer, inspired his earliest poetry, which he continued to explore while studying at the University of Ghana and the University of London. In 1966, Awoonor went into exile after the first Ghanaian President, Kwame Nkrumah, was ousted by a coup. While in exile, he completed a Ph.D. at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Upon his return to Ghana in 1975 was arrested for aiding a political fugitive. Some of his subsequent works, including The House by the Sea (1978) and Until the Morning After: Collected Poems (1987), contain poetic and narrative accounts of his experiences as a prisoner in Ghana's Ussher Fort prison.
His first volume of poetry, Rediscovery (1964) was followed by Night of My Blood (1971) and Ride Me, Memory (1973). Awoonor published his first novel in 1971, titled This Earth, My Brother..., and in 1974, turned to translating Ewe poetry with Guardians of the Sacred Word. His most recent novel, Comes the Voyager at Last (1992) is a mythic tale of the return of a slave from the New World to his native land. Awoonor has also written books of political commentary: The Ghana Revolution: A Background Account from a Personal Perspective (1984) and Ghana: A Political History from Pre-European to Modern Times (1990). |
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