The University of Ghana has recently launched a book on the Humanities and the Human Sciences at a ceremony held at the J.H. Nketia Conference Hall. The book titled Reclaiming the Human Sciences and Humanities through African Perspectives was inspired by an international symposium held on the Legon Campus over three days in September 2003 on the theme: “Canonical Works and Continuing Innovation in African Arts and Humanities”. The publication which constitutes two volumes of 85 papers was co-edited by Professor Helen Lauer of the Philosophy & Classics Department, and by Professor Kofi Anyidoho, Professor of English Literature who has just completed his post in the Kwame Nkrumah Chair for African Studies, in the Institute of African Studies.
The compilation consists of some of the best works authored by high calibre scholars across Africa, including Mahmood Mamdani, Kofi Awoonor, Chinua Achebe, Kofi Anyidoho, Kwame Nkrumah, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and Kwame Ninsin. Other contributors are James Ferguson, Kwasi Wiredu, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Kwabena Nketia, Femi Osofisan and Femi Ofosifan, and many more. The anthology is a single attempt to bring together the cross-disciplinary conversation that constitutes current and classic African dynamic reconstructions and corrections of standardized and canonized knowledge production about Africa that is outmoded and oversimplified.
