Ato Quayson

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Ato Quayson
Born26 August 1961 (1961-08-26) (age 63)
Ghana
Education University of Ghana; Cambridge University; Oxford University
Alma mater Pembroke College, Cambridge
Occupation(s)Literary critic and academic
Notable workOxford Street, Accra: City Life and the Itineraries of Transnationalism (2014)

Ato Quayson is a Ghanaian-Canadian literary critic and the Jean G. and Morris M. Dolye Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies and English at Stanford University, where he is the inaugural chair of the Department of African and African American Studies. [1] He was Chair of the Department of English from 2021 to 2023. He was formerly a Professor of English at New York University (NYU), [2] and before that was University Professor of English and inaugural Director of the Centre for Diaspora Studies at the University of Toronto. [3] He taught at the English Faculty of the University of Cambridge for a decade before moving to the University of Toronto. His writings on African literature, postcolonial studies, disability studies, urban studies and in literary theory have been widely published. He curates "Critic.Reading.Writing" on YouTube [4] and is also host of "Contours: The Cambridge Literary Studies Hour" on Cambridge Core. [5]

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Quayson is a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences (2006) the Royal Society of Canada (2013), and Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. He is also a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2023). He was Chief Examiner in English of the International Baccalaureate (2005–07), and has been a member of the Diaspora and Migrations Project Committee of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) of the UK, and of the European Research Council award grants panel on culture and cultural production (2011–2017). He is a former President of the African Studies Association. [6]

Education and career

Born in Ghana, Quayson earned his BA (Hons, First Class) at the University of Ghana and his PhD from Cambridge University in 1995. He went on to Oxford University as a Junior Research Fellow, before returning to Cambridge as a Fellow at Pembroke College and a member of the Faculty of English, where he eventually became a Reader in Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies. [7]

He was a Cambridge Commonwealth Scholar from 1991 to 1994 and is a Fellow of the Cambridge Commonwealth Society and has held fellowships at the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University (2004) and the Research Centre in the Humanities at the Australian National University (2015). In 2011–12, he was the Mary L. Cornille Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Humanities at the Newhouse Centre at Wellesley College. [8] He has lectured widely in Singapore, Hong Kong, Turkey, Australia, Israel, and across Africa, Europe, and the United States.

In addition to writing and editing a number of books, Quayson has written essays for many publications, serving also on the editorial boards of journals including Research in African Literatures, African Diasporas, New Literary History , University of Toronto Quarterly , and Postcolonial Text. [7] . He is founding editor of The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry and was chair of the judges for the 2015 Etisalat Prize for Literature. [9] [10] He also served on the board of the Noma Book Award (1997–2003), Africa's 100 Best Book Selection Panel (2001–2002), and several other literary juries and panels.

His book Oxford Street, Accra: City Life and the Itineraries of Transnationalism was co-winner of the Urban History Association's top award in the international category for books published in 2013–14. [11] Quayson's most recent book is the 2021 publication, Tragedy and Postcolonial Literature [12] which, in its examination of tragic philosophy from the Greeks through Shakespeare to the present era, deploys postcolonial literature to explore the links between suffering and ethics.

Selected publications

Books

References

  1. Liu, Judy N. (27 April 2023). "Professor Ato Quayson talks AAAS departmentalization". The Stanford Daily. Retrieved 11 April 2025.
  2. "Ato Quayson". as.nyu.edu. Retrieved 8 September 2019.
  3. "Judges", Etisalat Prize for Literature.
  4. "Critic.Reading.Writing with ATO QUAYSON" via YouTube.
  5. "Contours: The Cambridge Literary Studies Hour". Cambridge Core. Cambridge University Press.
  6. "Ato Quayson | Department of English". english.stanford.edu. Retrieved 20 August 2023.
  7. 1 2 "Ato Quayson" Archived 1 September 2016 at the Wayback Machine , Centre for Diaspora Studies at the University of Toronto.
  8. "2011–2012 Newhouse Resident Fellows" Archived 1 October 2015 at the Wayback Machine , Wellesley College.
  9. "Judges Announced for the 2015 Etisalat Prize for Literature", Books Live – Sunday Times, 20 July 2015.
  10. Quayson, Ato (30 March 2016). "The Improvisational Jazz Rhythms of Fiston Mwanza Mujila's Tram 83". Brittle Paper . Retrieved 11 April 2025.
  11. Smith, Elaine (12 November 2015). "Top Urban History Association Prize for Ato Quayson". U of T News. University of Toronto. Retrieved 11 April 2025.
  12. "Tragedy and Postcolonial Literature". Standford: Department of English. Retrieved 18 October 2022.