CAS Lecture Series - Singing [In]elegance: A Critique of Tradition and Custom in African Women’s Songs

Helen Yitah is a professor of African and postcolonial literatures and a Rice Visiting Fellow at the Macmillan Center, Yale University for 2023-24. She is the immediate past Dean of the School of Languages at the University of Ghana, where she taught for over two decades in the Department of English. Dr. Yitah’s main research interests are in West African feminist theory and women’s literary traditions, as well as children’s literature in Africa. Her books include Philosophical Foundations of the African Humanities through Postcolonial Perspectives (Brill/Rodopi, 2019), Radio- A Platform for Creative Writing: Ghanaian Literature and Broadcast Culture (Illinois State University Press, 2018), and After the Ceremonies: New and Selected Poems by Ama Ata Aidoo (University of Nebraska Press, 2017). She is a Fellow of the Columbia University Centre for the Study of Social Difference, and since April 2023, Ghana’s focal point for UNESCO’s World Atlas of Languages. Dr. Yitah is a Fellow and the Honorary Secretary of the Ghana Academy of arts and Sciences.