ATO QUAYSON Address: Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies Rm 230, Jackman Humanities Building, 170 St George St Toronto M5R 2M8 Canada Telephone: 416-946-8464/0586 (office) 416-972-6511 (home) 416-458-9508 (cell) Fax: 416-946-0272 e-mail: [email protected] EDUCATION 1995: PhD; research focus on Nigerian literary history, Faculty of English, Cambridge University. 1989: B A (Hons) First Class, Arabic and English, University of Ghana. 1974-81: O and A Levels, Apam Secondary School, Ghana, CURRENTLY Director Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies University of Toronto 2005 – Professor of English University of Toronto 2005 – 2 AWARDS AND HONORS Fellow, Royal Society of Canada, 2013-. Cornille Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Humanities, Wellesley College, 2011-2012 Dean’s Award, University of Toronto, 2008. Fellow, Ghana Academy of Arts and Science, 2005-. Fellow, the Du Bois Institute of African American Studies, Harvard University, Jan-August, 2004. Member, Cambridge Commowealth Society, 1995-. Cambridge Commonwealth Scholar, 1991-1994. PREVIOUSLY Chief Examiner in English, the International Baccalaureate Sept 2005-July 2007 Assistant Director of Graduate Studies, Faculty of English, University of Cambridge. Oct 2004-July 2005 Reader in Commonwealth and Postcolonial Literatures, University of Cambridge Oct 2003-Sept 2005 Director, African Studies Centre, University of Cambridge Oct 1998-July 2005 Tutorial Bursar, Pembroke College, University of Cambridge April 2001-Sept 2003 University Lecturer in English, University of Cambrige Jan 1998-Sept 2003 2 3 Acting Director, African Studies Centre, University of Cambridge Oct 1997-Sept 1998 University Assistant Lecturer in Commonwealth and International Literature in English, University of Cambridge Sept 1995-Dec 1998 Stipendiary Junior Research Fellow, Wolfson College, Oxford Oct1994-SeptAugust 1995 PUBLICATIONS: BOOKS 1. The Cambridge Companion to the Postcolonial Novel in English (Cambridge University Press, 2015). 2. Oxford St., Accra: City Life, the Itineraries of Transnationalism, Duke University Press, 2014 (xii; 312 pages). 3. Blackwell Companion to Diaspora and Transnationalism, ed. with Girish Daswani, New York: Blackwell, 2013 (xvi; 584 pages) 4. Cambridge History of Postcolonial Literature, 2 vols, ed. Cambridge University Press, 2012 (lxii; 1306 pages). 5. Labor Migration, Human Trafficking, and Multinational Corporations, with Antonela Arhin, London: Routledge, 2012 (vii; 192 pages) 6. Fathers and Daughters: An Anthology of Exploration, ed. Oxford: Ayebia Publishers, 2008 (246 pages). 7. Aesthetic Nervousness: Disability and the Crisis of Representation, Columbia University Press, 2007 (xvi; 246 pages). 3 4 8. African Literary Theory: An Anthology of Literary Criticism and Theory, ed. (with Tejumola Olaniyan) Blackwell, 2007 (xix; 774 pages). 9. Calibrations: Reading for the Social, Minnesota University Press, 2003 (xl; 179 pages). 10. Introduction and notes to new edition of Nelson Mandela, No Easy Walk to Freedom, London: Penguin Classics, 2002. 11. Relocating Postcolonialism, ed. (with David Theo Goldberg) Oxford: Blackwell, 2001 (xxii; 371 pages). 12. Postcolonialism: Theory, Practice or Process? Cambridge: Polity, 2000 (vii; 208 pages). 13. Strategic Transformations in Nigerian Writing: Orality and History in Rev Samuel Johnson, Amos Tutuola, Wole Soyinka and Ben Okri. Oxford and Bloomington, James Currey and Indiana University Press, 1997 (x; 180 pages). General Editor, the Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry (PLI) www.journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=PLI This is a new journal from Cambridge University Press on literary postcolonialism, with first issue planned for the first quarter of 2014. Unlike most postcolonial journals in the field this one will be focused primarily on restoring respectability to the reading of literature and aesthetics and also on encouraging papers from all areas that have employed postcolonial modes of analysis including from Renaissance, Shakespearean, Medeival and Victorian Studies as well as the currently dominant contributions coming from studies of the twentieth and twenty- first centuries. Contributions on hitherto peripheralized regions in postcolonial literary studies such as Southeast Asia, the Arab world and Latin America will also be actively encouraged. Forthcoming Books The Cambridge Companion to the Postcolonial Novel in English (In press; publication date November 2015). 4 5 Essays “Shakespeare in Africa”, The Greenwood Shakespeare Encyclopaedia, 5 volumes, edited by Patricia Parker (In press, 2018). 3000 words. Work-in-Progress Books On Postcolonial Tragedy, early stages of writing, completion planned for summer of 2017. African Literary Theory: A Critical Introduction, with Tejumola Olaniyan; Blackwell, scheduled for completion in 2015. Diaspora Literary Studies: A Comparative Introduction, Blackwell; projected completion in 2016. PUBLICATIONS: REFEREED ARTICLES “Explication de texte: Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman in Comparative Perspective”, the Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry 2.2, (2015): 287-296. “The Journal of Commonwealth Literature: the 1980s”, 50th anniversary issue of the Journal of Commonwealth Literature, September (2015): 1-18. “Disability Aesthetics”, the Oxford Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, ed. Michael Kelly, Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 407- 411. “Conjunction, Preposition, Supplement, and Trace in Slavery and the Culture of Taste”, Research in African Literatures 45.4 (2014): 24-28. 5 6 “The Sighs of History: Postcolonial Debris and the Question of (Literary) History, New Literary History 43.2, (2012): 359- 370. “Periods versus Concepts: Space Making and the Question of Postcolonial Literary History, PMLA 127.2 (2012): 342- 348. “Coevalness, Recursivity and the Feet of Lionel Messi”, Special Forum on Jean and John Comaroff, Theory from the South, Cultural Anthropology 27.1, 2012; http://www.culanth.org/fieldsights/269-coevalness- recursivity-and-the-feet-of-lionel-messi “Self-Writing and Existential Alienation in African Literature: Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God”, Research in African Literatures 42.2 (March, 2011): 30-45. “Kòbòlò Poetics: African Urban Scripts and Readerships”, New Literary History 41.1 (2010): 413-438. “Signs of the Times: Discourse Ecologies and Street Life”, City & Society, 22.1 (2010): 77-96. “Autism, Narrative, and Emotions: On Samuel Beckett’s Murphy” Special Issue on Narrative and the Emotions, The University of Toronto Quarterly, 79.2 (2010): 838-865. “Colonial Space-making and hybridizing history, or ‘Are the Indians of East Africa Africans or Indians?’” in Diasporas: Concepts, Intersections, Identities, eds. Kim Knott and Sean McLoughlin, London: Zed Books, 2010. pp. 243-248. “’I no Be Like You: Accra in Life and Literature”, PMLA, 122.1 (January), 2007. “Diaspora Studies, Area Studies, and Critical Pedagogies”. Guest Editor of special issue of Comparative Studies in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, 27.3 (November), 2007. 6,500 words “Intellectual History and Literary Criticism: Situating a Dramatic Monologue” review of Biodun Jeyifo, Wole 6 7 Soyinka, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Research in African Literatures, Spring 2005. *Special Forum on Calibrations: Reading for the Social in Research in African Literatures 36.2 (Summer 2005). Essays on the book by Anjali Prabhu, Adleke Adeeko and Uzo Esonwanne, with a response by Ato Quayson. “Incessant Particularieties: Calibrations as Close Reading”, Research in African Literatures 36.2 (Summer) 2005: 122- 131. “Symbolization Compulsions: Testing a Psychoanalytic Concept through African Literature”, The Toronto Quarterly, Spring 2004. “Obverse denominations: Africa? Public Culture 14.2 (2002): 585-88. “Breaches in the Commonplace: Achille Mbembe’s On the Postcolony”, African Studies Review 44.2 (September) 2001. Also published in H-Africa, http://www.h-net.msu.edu. “Social Imaginaries in Transition: The Culture Hero as Conjunctural Concept in Africa”, The Round Table: Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs, Issue 362 (October 2001). “Symbolization Compulsions: Freud, African Literature, and South Africa’s Process of Truth and Reconciliation”, The Cambridge Quarterly, 30.3 (2001). “Characterological Types and the Frames of Hybridity” Interventions 1: 3 (1999): 3-13. “Postcolonialism and Interdisciplinarity”, special issue of Essays and Studies edited by Benita Parry and Laura Chrisman, (1999): 75-94. 7 8 “Protocols of Representation and the Problems of Constituting an African Gnosis: Achebe and Okri,” in The Yearbook of English Studies, Vol. 27 ‘The Politics of Postcolonial Criticism’, edited by Andrew Gurr (1997): 137-49. “Means, Methods, and Meanings: African Studies and the Question of Interdisciplinarity,” in the Journal of African History 25, (1998): 313-24. “Wole Soyinka and Autobiography as Political Unconscious,” Journal of Commonwealth Literature 32.2 (1996): 19-32. “Anatomizing a Postcolonial Tragedy: Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogonis,” in On Risk, Performance Research 1.2 (1996): 83- 92. “Contemporary literary theory and the analysis of indigenous cultures: three examples on the Yoruba,” Research in African Literatures 26.4 (Winter, 1995): 185-196. “Criticism, Realism and the Disguises of Both: an analysis of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart with an evaluation of the criticism relating to it,” Research in African Literatures 25.4 (1994): 117-136. PUBLICATIONS: NON-REFEREED ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS “Chronology of