Helen Atawube Yitah(Prof), B.A., MPhil (Ghana), PhD. (South Carolina, Columbia)

PROFILE:

Helen Yitah is a Professor in English, University of Ghana. She teaches Introductory Courses in Composition and Literary Studies. Her higher level teaching is in the areas of the New Literatures in English, Eighteenth Century British Literature, The Short Story, Practice in Criticism, Literary Theory, American literature and Research Methods. Her scholarly articles have appeared in many local and international peer reviewed journals.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Her research interests are mainly in Gender Identity in Oral and Written African Literature but she has also researched and published on African American and American Literature.

ONGOING RESEARCH

Nation and narration: early nationalist writers and their user of literature for nationalist struggles (Being funded by the University of Ghana)

COURSES TAUGHT

ENGL 111 Foundation English 1 (Writing Skills)

ENGL 112 Foundation English 2 (Writing and Imaginative Literature)

ENGL 343 Practice in Criticism

ENGL 392 The Short Story

ENGL 387 The New Literatures in English

ENGL 608 American Literature

ENGL 610 Research Methods

PUBLICATIONS

Books

1. Yitah, Helen. Throwing Stones in Jest: Kasena Women’s Proverbial Revolt. Saabrucken, Germany: Lambert Academic Publishers, 2011.

2. Yitah, Helen. Critical Readings of Faceless. Accra: Sub-saharan Publishers, 2014.

3. Yitah, Helen. (Forthcoming) (Edited with Introductory Chapter). After the Ceremonies: New and Selected Poems by Ama Ata Aidoo. University of Nebraska Press, 2014.

4. Adika, Gordon, George Ossom-Batsa and Helen Yitah (Ed. & Introduction). New Perspectives on African Humanity: Beliefs, Values & Artistic Expression. Accra: Adwinsa Publications, 2014.

Book Chapters

5. Yitah, Helen. “The More Storytellers, the Better”: Diversity, Ghanaian Literature and Mabel Dove-Danquah’s Fiction. Ghanaian voices on Topics in English Language and Literature. University of Ghana Readers Series. Ed. A.N. Mensah, Jemima Anderson and Prince K. Adika. Oxford: Ayebia Clarke Publishing Limited, 2014. 39-54.

6. Yitah, Helen. “Strong-Headed and Masculine Hearted Women: Female Subjectivity in Mabel Dove-Danquah’s Fiction.” The One in the Many: Nation Building through Cultural Diversity. Ed. Helen Lauer, Nana Aba Amfo and Joana Boampong. Accra: Sub-Saharan, 2013. 161-180.

7. Yitah, Helen. “Marginal Notes: The Mbaasem/Daily Graphic Writers’ Page.” Essays in Honour of Ama Ata Aidoo at 70: A Reader in African Cultural Studies. Ed. Anne V. Adams. Oxfordshire: Ayebia Clarke Publishers, 2012. 415-20.

8. Yitah, Helen. “Rethinking Emergent Difference: Women’s Proverbs as Discourse of Representation.” (forthcoming) Critical Transformations in African Cultures. Ed. Aderemi Raji-Oyelade. Lisbon, Portugal: The Humanities Institute, Lisbon University, 2012.

9. Angsotinge, Gervase, Kari Dako, Aloysius Denkabe, and Helen Yitah. “Exploitation, Negligence and Violence: Gendered Interrelationships in Amma Darko’s Novels.” Broadening the Horizon: Critical Introductions to Amma Darko. Ed. Vincent Odamtten. Oxfordshire, U.K.: Ayebia Clarke, 2007. 81-99.

10. Dako, Kari, Aloysius Denkabe, and Helen Yitah. “Pawns and Players: The Women in Amma Darko’s Novels.” Sex and Gender in an Era of Aids: Ghana at the Turn of the Millennium. Ed. Christine Oppong, M. Yaa P.A. Oppong, and Irene Odotei. Accra: Sub-Saharan, 2006. 273-86.

Journal Articles

11. Yitah, Helen and Kari Dako. “Pidgin, ‘Broken’ English and ‘Othering’ in Ghanaian Literature.” Legon Journal of the Humanities, special issue Volume 23 (2012): 124-152.

12. Yitah, Helen. “Kasena Women’s Critique of Gender Justice through Proverbial Jesting.” Journal of African Cultural Studies 24.1 (June 2012): 9-20.

13. Yitah, Helen. “Rethinking the African American Great Migration Narrative: Reading Zora Neale Hurston’s Jonah’s Gourd Vine.” The Southern Quarterly 49 (fall 2011): 10-29.

14. Yitah, Helen and Kari Dako. “Controlling Deviant Wives: Marriage and Justice in the Early Ghanaian Novel.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 48.4 (2012):359-370. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17449855.2011.629126.

15. Yitah, Helen. “Conceptions of Motherhood in Proverbs Used by Ghanaian Women.” Proverbium: Yearbook of International Proverb Scholarship 28 (2011): 381-408.

16. Yitah, Helen and Mabel Komasi. “Authencity, Past and Present in Ghanaian Children’s Literature.” Children’s Literature in Education 41.1 (2009): 1-11.

17. Yitah, Helen and Mabel Komasi. “Children’s Literature in Ghana: A Survey.” Children’s Literature 37 (2009): 236-55.

18. Yitah, Helen. “Fighting with Proverbs: Kasena Women’s (Re)Definition of Female Personhood Through Proverbial Jesting.” Research in African Literatures 40.3 (2009): 74-95.

19. Yitah, Helen. “The Dynamics of Place in Lee Smith’s Saving Grace.” Globus 1.1 (2009): 39-54.

20. Yitah, Helen.“The Native’s Nightmares as Enabling Discourse in Richard Wright’s Native Son.” Legon Journal of Humanities XIX (2008): 39-51.

21. Yitah, Helen. “Disgrace, Displacement and Reparation in J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace.” Institute of African Studies Research Review 24.1 (2008): 27-36.

22. Yitah, Helen. “(At)tiring the Naked: Benjamin Kwakye’s Allegory of the Nation in The Clothes of Nakedness.” Obsidian: Literature of the African Diaspora 8.2 (2007): 94-112.

23. Yitah, Helen. “Throwing Stones in Jest: Kasena Women’s ‘Proverbial’ Revolt.” (revised). Proverbium: Yearbook of International Proverb Scholarship 27 (2007): 369-91.

24. Yitah, Helen. “Throwing Stones in Jest: Kasena Women’s ‘Proverbial’ Revolt.” Oral Tradition 21.2 (2006): 233-49.

25. Yitah, Helen. “Bridging the Composition/Literature Divide.” The Language Centre Journal (University of Ghana) Vol. 1, (2005): 63-75.

26. Dako, Kari, Moussa Traore, and Helen Yitah. “Families Portrayed in West African Fiction.” African Studies Research Review Supplement 15 (2004): 61-67.

27. Yitah, Helen. “Inhabited by Un Santo: The Antojo and Yolanda’s Search for the ‘Missing’ Self in How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents.” The Bilingual Review/La Revista Bilingue 27.3 (2003): 234-43.

Book Reviews and Encyclopaedia Entries

28. Yitah, Helen. “Brew, Kwesi.” The Encyclopaedia of Postcolonial Literatures in English. (2nd Ed). 3 vols. Eds. Eugene Benson and L.W. Conolly. London and New York: Routledge, 2005. 146-147.

29. Yitah, Helen. “Poetry, West Africa.” The Encyclopaedia of Postcolonial Literatures in English. (2nd Ed). 3 Vols. Eds. Eugene Benson and L.W. Conolly. London and New York: Routledge, 2005. 1277-1278.

30. Yitah, Helen. “Review of The African Epic Controversy” by Mugyabuso Mulokozi. African Studies Research Review NS 25.2 (2009): 103-106.

31. Yitah, Helen. “Ama Darko’s Faceless.” Legon Journal of the Humanities 16 (2005): 211-13.

32. Yitah, Helen. “If You Can Talk, You Can Sing.” Review of Marion Molteno’s If You Can Walk, You Can Dance. Glendora Books Supplement 5 (2000): 30.

33. Yitah, Helen. “Memories Out of Time/Recalling Home.” A Review of Kofi Anyidoho’s The Place We Call Home. Africa Review of Books 8.2 (2012): 14.

34. Yitah, Helen. A Review of Kofi Anyidoho’s The Place We Call Home. Daily Graphic, September 6, 2011, p.10.

35. Yitah, Helen. “Ama Darko on the Horizon of Ghanaian Literature.” The New Legon Observer Vol. 2 No. 6 (10 April, 2008):15-17.

36. Yitah, Helen. Review of Peter Carey’s The True History of the Kelly Gang. The Mirror, Accra, April 28, 2001.

Journal Volumes Edited

• Legon Journal of the Humanities, volume 21, 2010

• Legon Journal of the Humanities, volume 22, 2011

• Legon Journal of the Humanities, volume 23, 2012

• Legon Journal of the Humanities, Special Issue, 2012

• Ghana Social Science Journal, special issue, 2012 (Publisher: University of Ghana-Carnegie Next Generation of Academics for Africa Project)

• Legon Journal of the Humanities, volume 24, 2013

CONTACT INFORMATION:

via post: Department of English

University of Ghana,

P. O. Box LG 129

Legon