Biography of Kwame Anthony APPIAH

Ghana > Literature : Kwame Anthony APPIAH



Born on 08/05/1954 (format : day/month/year)

Biography :

Kwame Anthony Appiah  Ghanaian - British  American born May 8, 1951 in London England,  is a  a world renowned philosopher, cultural theorist and novelist, explores the ramifications of this rich new narrative. A humanist with a vast oeuvre, Dr. Appiah has tackled everything from race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, religion, nationhood, and multiculturalism. Along the way, he has critically examined and questioned the individual, our identities, and the way we interact and connect with each other. He will look at the value of the humanities in the context of an increasingly globalized and pluralist world.

Dr. Appiah has taught philosophy and African-American studies at the University of Ghana, Colombia, Drexel, Cornell, Yale, Harvard, and Princeton and is currently the Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University. He is the President of the PEN American Center and the Chair of the board of the American Council for Learned Societies.

 

 He has written three novels and edited numerous nonfiction books.
Prof. Appiah is from a family of renowned academics and writers. He is the son of Joe Appiah (black,   African aristocrat, and a relative of the Ashanti King of Ghana). Joe Appiah was , a lawyer and politician, who was also, at various times, a Member of Parliament, an Ambassador and a President of the Ghana Bar Association, and Peggy Appiah, the novelist and children’s writer. Both parents are deceased.
Prof. Appiah is recognized as a world traveler immersed in everything from ethics to racial identity, who has written often about Africans and African-Americans and set his fiction in England and Italy.
Born in London, Prof. Appiah had lived for many years in Ghana, before moving on to a career in teaching abroad.

Some of his achievements include been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.
He was inducted in 2008 into the American Academy of Arts and Letters; and he has served on the boards of the PEN American Center, the National Humanities Center and the American Academy in Berlin.
He has honorary degrees from the University of Richmond, (2000), Colgate University (2003) Bard College (2004), Fairleigh Dickinson University (2006) and Swarthmore College (2006), and received the degree of Honorary Doctor of Philosophy in May 2008 from Dickinson College, where he gave the Commencement Address in the pouring rain.
In the fall of 2008, he was awarded the first Joseph B. and Toby Gittler Prize by Brandeis University for “outstanding and lasting scholarly contributions to racial, ethnic and/or religious relations.”

 

With barck Obama: February 12, 2012, Kwame Anthony Appiah was presented with a National Medal of Humanities by U.S. President Barack Obama (R) during an East Room ceremony at the White House in Washington, DC. Appiah was presented with the medal for seeking eternal truths in the contemporary world.

 

Family: Anthony Appiah has 3 sisters who live in Africa. He is openly gay and ives in manhattan .

Internet site : http://appiah.net/biography/



Update this page