Emmanuel Adeniyi

Dr Emmanuel Adeniyi is currently a visiting fellow at the African Studies Centre Leiden (ASCL), University of Leiden, Netherlands, and belongs to the Collaborative Research Group (CRG) working on the theme, “Africa in the World: Rethinking Africa’s Global Connections”. His research focus is on the imperativeness of interrogating the dependence of African researchers on Western paradigms and developing indigenous theories for reading cultural productions in Africa. Dr Adeniyi’s research examines the roles of Western paradigms in African Studies and instantiates how African indigenous knowledges can be systematised and adopted as analytic tools for reading cultural production in Africa. He advocates the application of indigenous thoughts and ideas as logical theoretical perspectives to navigate Africa out of its backwater of underdevelopment reinforced by inappropriate and conflicting foreign-derived paradigms. Dr Adeniyi teaches at the Department of English and Literary Studies, Federal University, Oye-Ekiti, Ekiti State, Nigeria. He received his PhD in African Diaspora Literature from the University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria, where he researched on the agencies of retention and transformation of continental African culture and correlates of African cultural images in the Americas. His research interest covers Postcolonial Literature, Diaspora/Migration Studies, Oral Literature, Gender Studies, Drag Studies, Literary Stylistics, Film and Media Studies, intersection between music and literature, Nigerian Hip-hop, Memory Studies, Sacred Texts, Social Media Studies, among others. His articles have been published in African Studies, Communicatio: South African Journal for Communication and Theory, Journal of Literary Studies, English Studies, Tydskrift vir Letterkunde, Anglo Saxonica, African Identities, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Afrika Focus, Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, Postcolonial Studies, University of Leeds African Studies Bulletin, ELOPE, and many others. He is also a fellow of Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin, Germany, and World Journalism Institute (WJI), New York, USA.

Research Interests
I am deeply interested in interdisciplinary studies and love to undertake research endeavours that interrogate issues, open up new areas of thoughts, and come up with novel ideas on how to develop or advance the frontiers of knowledge production in Black/African Studies, Diaspora Studies and Postcolonial Literature.

Recent Presentation(s)
•    Transregional Academy on “Minor/Small Literatur(s), Berlin. Perspectives on World Literature from Elsewhere”, 11 June, 2019. Paper presented: “Major-Minor Binary: Subversion of Metropolitan Language and the Construction of Home-Grown Epistemology in African Literature of English Expression”.

Selected Journal Publications
•    (2022): “‘We’re now the Walking Dead’: Predatory Policing, Youth Agency and Framing in Nigeria’s #EndSARS Social Activism”. (African Studies, 81:2), 149-169.
•    (2022): “Science Spirituality Antipodal Debate – Resolving Long-Time Clash through Syncretism? Reading from The Accidental Santera”. (Epiphany: Journal of Transdisciplinary Studies, 15:1), 9-35.
•    (2022): “Nigerian Afrobeats, Irony of Belonging, and the Here-Elsewhere Dialectics”. (Communicatio: South African Journal for Communication and Theory, 48:1), 66-101.
•    (2022): “Wakanda Utopia, Blackman’s Techno-Scientific Imaginaries, and the Complexities of Pseudoscience in Black Panther”. (Anglo Saxonica, 20:1), 1-18.
•    (2022): “Life Writings, Autobiographical Subjects: Exploring Colonial Narratives, Anti-Memory in African Freedom Fighters’ Texts”. (English Studies, 103:2), 338-360.
•    (2021): “‘Africa is Dying and No One Gives a Damn’: Combating Colonial Historiography with Revisionism, Temporality in Tade Ipadeola’s The Sahara Testaments”. (African Identities, DOI:10.1080/14725843.2021.1994852), 1-22.
•    (2021): “African Literature, Metonymic Gaps, and the Gandasation of Metropolitan Language in Jennifer Makumbi’s Kintu”. (Tydskrift vir Letterkunde, 58.1), 86-97.
•    (2021): “Penis Primacy, Female Marginality, and Masculine Subjectivity in ‘Nigeria’s Rape Culture’”. (Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 39:6)1308-1336.
•    (2021): “Ṣàngó’s Incest, Oxala’s Equanimity and the Retention of Yorùbá Myth-Legends in Atlantic Yorùbá Dramaturgy”. (Afrika Focus, 34.2), 213-236.
•    (2021): “Diaspora Plurality, Imprecision of ‘African Diaspora’, and the Emergence of Yorùbá Diaspora Studies”. (International Journal of Diaspora & Cultural Criticism, 11.2), 55-84.
•    (2020): “Paratactic Narrative Mode and Taxonomic Conundrum of a Postmodern Verse Novel: Reading from Bernardine Evaristo’s Lara”. (Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 61.2), 157-170.
•    (2020): “Nigerian Afrobeats and Religious Stereotypes: Pushing the Boundaries of a Music Genre beyond the Locus of Libertinism”. (Contemporary Music Review, 39.1), 59-90.
•    (2020): “Who Nigeria Epp?: From Muse to Text, Neo-Marxist Appeal and Alter/Native Canonicity of Two Nigerian Poets”. (Postcolonial Studies, 24.3), 399-419.
•    (2020): “Dispersion of the Yorùbá to the Americas: A Fatalist Hermeneutics of Orí in the Yorùbá Cosmos – Reading from Tutuoba: Salem’s Black Shango Slave Queen”. (Yoruba Studies Review, 5.1/2), 1-19.
•    with Niyi Akingbe and Mark Ighile (2020): “Resuscitating the African Oral Artistic Tradition: Toward a Re-enactment of Storytelling for Moral Rebirth among the Nigerian Youth”. (Southern African Journal for Folklore Studies, 30.1), 1-19.
•    (2020): “Relational Dialectics, Interspecific Interactions, and Religious Animus in Jorge Amado’s The War of the Saints – A Postcolonial Critique”. (Postcolonial Interventions: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 5.1), 108-138.
•    (2019): “Ancestral Memories, Ritual Archives and the Anatomisation of Yorubaisms in Nicolás Guillén’s Poetics”. (Journal of Literary Studies, 35.2), 35-61.
•    with Niyi Akingbe, (2019):  “De/Constructing White Supremacy: Contending Antipodal Politics in Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940)”. (Latin American Review, 35), 1-19.
•    (2018): “The Portraiture of Stockholm Syndrome: Cultural Dislocation in Phillis Wheatley’s Poetry Collection and Selected African American Texts”. (English Studies at New Bulgarian University ESNBU, 4.1), 41-60.
•    (2018): “Indexicality and Graphetics as Linguistic Tools for Meaning Creation and Negotiation in the Poems of Atlantic Yoruba Poets”. (University of Leeds African Studies Bulletin (LUCAS), 79), 55-83.
•    (2017): “Bourgeois Tensions, Marxist Economics and Aphaeresis of Communal Spirit in Sembene Ousmane’s God’s Bits of Wood and Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Devil on the Cross”. (ELOPE, 14.2), 55-68.
•    with Niyi Akingbe (2017): “‘Reconfiguring Others’: Negotiating Identity in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah”. (Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 9.4), 37-55.  Publication(s) in Books
•    (2018): “Male Other, Female Self and Post-Feminist Consciousness in Sembène Ousmane’s God’s Bits of Wood and Flora Nwapa’s Efuru”. In: Literary and Linguistic Perspectives on Orality, Literacy and Gender Studies: A Celebration of Oluwatoyin Jegede @ 60, Eds. Ayo O., Kazeem A. and Adebayo M. (Ibadan: Kraft Books Limited), 57-72.

Paper(s) Accepted for Publication
•    “‘European Bays of Hope’, Trans-Mediterranean Fatalities and African Migration Crisis in Selected Migritude Poems”. Crossings: Journal of Migration & Culture.

Forthcoming Publications
•    “Europhonism, Glocalised Knowledges, and Subversive Politics in Lola Shoneyin’s The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives”. Undergoing review at: CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture.
•    “Islamic Clothing, Subjectivity, and the Breaking of Perceptual Barriers in South-Western Nigeria ‘Insider-Outsider’ Social Relations”. Undergoing review at: African Identities.
•    with Gbadeghesin, M. V. “Negotiating Boundaries through Reality Shows: A Multimodal Study of Big Brother Naija”. Undergoing review at: Critical African Studies.
•    “Humour, Slapsticks in Time of Pandemic and Comedic Response of Nigerians to Coronavirus”. Undergoing review at: European Journal of Humour Research.
•    with Patience Ngozika “Rethinking African Ecocriticism beyond Regional Boundaries: Corporate Capitalism, Global Periphery and Belonging in Nigerian Eco-fictions”. Undergoing review at: Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism.   
•    “‘Nigeria in Text’: Literature, Social Criticism and Meditative Journaling of a Nigerian Writer on National Putrescence”. Undergoing review for Professor Remy Onyejekwe Oriaku’s Festschrift. 
•    “Eco-critical Capitalism, Human Warfare and the Decolonization of African Environment in Helon Habila’s Novels”. Undergoing review at: OYE: Journal of Language, Literature and Popular Culture.