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Professor Kwesi Yankah, folklorist and Ghana's former Minister of State of Tertiary Education, will discuss how HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 have triggered folk responses in Ghana framed within cultural attitudes to calamity, and how Ghana's presidency has resorted to a heritage of visual symbolism as an integral part of crisis management.
Professor Kwesi Yankah
Thursday, 21 November 2024
6.30pm, Sir Duncan Rice Library, 7th Floor, Craig Suite
Book your place at elphinstone@abdn.ac.uk
Abstract: Two diseases have ravaged Africa in the past fifty years: HIV/AIDS and COVID-19. These have triggered folk responses in Ghana framed within cultural attitudes to calamity and the considered potency of the spoken word. At the same time, because the very nature of these crises constrains verbal production, Ghana’s presidency has resorted to a heritage of visual symbolism as an integral part of crisis management. This paper is based on research with HIV patients returning to die at home as well as indigenous responses to COVID-19.
Kwesi Yankah combines accomplishments of three kinds: he has written intenrationally recognised linguistic and social analyses of African folklore; he is a public intellectual, essayist, and columnist with a large following in Ghana; and he has been deeply involved in higher education both at administrative and political levels – he was Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana and later President of the Central University until becoming Ghana’s Minister of State of Tertiary Education (2017–2020). His disciplinary background is in Folklore Studies, and he is Professor of Linguistics and Oral Literature, specialising in the ethnography of communication. His works on royal oratory in Ghana, on proverb praxis, and the significance of literacy are widely read and appreciated.
The author of several books, including Speaking for the Chief: Okyeame and the Politics of Royal Oratory, he is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Folklore Society. Professor Yankah was honoured at the 2016 Africa Summit for his contribution to education in Ghana and his contribution to Africa’s development. He has been Senior External Advisor for the Center for Local Strategies Research, University of Washington, and a Member of the Policy Working Group of the African Presidential Archives and Research Centre at Boston University.
- Hosted by
- Elphinstone Institute
- Venue
- The Sir Duncan Rice Library, Fl. 7, Craig Suite
- Contact
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Free, but ticketed. Book your place by e-mailing elphinstone@abdn.ac.uk