Dr. Christabel Aba Sam

Short Bio

Christabel Aba Sam is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana where she teaches Gender and Writing, Principles of Prose Fiction, Studies in Literature and Society and Research Methods to both undergraduate and graduate students. She holds a PhD in Literary Studies, MPhil in English and a B. (Ed) Arts (English Option) degree from the University of Cape Coast, Ghana. Dr. Sam is a fellow of the African Multiple Cluster of Excellence at both the Lagos African Cluster entre in Nigeria and the Bayreuth Academy in Germany. Her research interests include Masculinity Studies, Post colonial Futures, Spatial Politics and the Song tale. Dr. Sam has published articles in prestigious journals including Research in African Literatures, Cogent Arts and Humanities, Critical African Studies and African Literature Association.

Selected Publications

• Bonsu, E. M., Asempasah, R., & Sam, C. A. (2024). Gendering visions of the postcolonial modernist state through names: a literary onomastic analysis of Nii Ayikwei Parkes’s Tail of the Blue Bird (2009). Critical African Studies, 1-16.
• Sam, C. A. (2023). Becoming conscious of the self: Spatial dynamics, character pairs and the feminist vision in Amma Darko’s Beyond the Horizon. Drumspeak: International Journal of Research in the Humanities, (Special Issue), 22-36.
• Sam, C. A. (2023). Narrating the black male immigrant experience in Yaa Gyasi’s Transcendent Kingdom (2020). African & Diaspora Discourse: A Journal of the Institute of African and Diaspora Studies, University of Lagos, 5, 1-20.
• Ennin, T. P & Sam, C.A. (2023). Unmasking patriarchies: Paradigms of violation and the future praxis in Nawal El Saadawi’s God Dies by the Nile. Research in African literatures, 53(4), 32-44.
• Sam, C. A. (2022). Narrative as socially symbolic: Sexual bribery and the pragmatics of resolution in J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace and Kunle Afolayan’s International Journal of Current Research in the Humanities, 26(1), 322-336.

Project Description

Beyond the tunes: Masculine Representations, Trends and Insights from Contemporary Ghanaian Afrobeats

The burgeoning literature on African masculinities, particularly within the Ghanaian literary arts landscape, has rarely focused on Afrobeats. Due to the explosive popularity and androcentric nature of Ghanaian Afrobeats, it is crucial to examine how the sung tale functions as a site for theorising masculinities. Drawing on an eclectic approach and using selected compositions of Ghanaian Afrobeats, this paper explores the ways in which men are represented in the selected songs. The paper demonstrates that these manifestations are pertinent for theorising masculinities especially as it reveals the social politics of being in specific contexts. The paper contributes to our understanding of aesthetic communication within sonic spaces and also sheds light on how the sung tale serves as an intertextual coda for thinking masculinity.

Keywords: Africa, Afrobeats, Ghana, insights, masculinities