Onookome Okome
Professor of English and Film Studies African Literature and Cinema
Department of English and Film Studies University of Alberta, Edmonton
Canada T6G 2E5
Tel: 780-492-7819
Email: ookome@ualberta.ca
Fellowship/Sponsor: Alexander von Humboldt, Bonn.
Title of research projects pursued in Mainz:
1."Nollywood and Beyond Symposium" (May 13-16, 2009)
2."Freedom, Highlife and the Politics of West African Highife Music of the 1950s and 1960s" Duration of stay: 3 months (April-July, 2009)
Research interests: African arts, Literature, cinema
Onookome Okome earned his PhD from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria in 1991 and taught theater and cinema studies at the Department of Theatre Arts, University of Calabar, Nigeria from 1989 to 2002.
He co-authored "Cinema and Social Change in West Africa" (Jos: Nigerian Film Corporation) with Jonathan Haynes of Brooklyn College, New York. He edited "Before I am Hanged: Ken Saro-Wiwa, Literature, Politics and Dissent," a book of essays on the slain minority rights activist published by Africa World Press, New Jersey. In 2004, he edited a collection of essays on Africa’s first Nobel laureate for literature, Professor Wole Soyinka "Ogun’s Children: The Literature and Politics of Wole Soyinka Since the Nobel" (AWP). He has also edited and introduced a book of essays on the Niger Delta poet and scholar based in North Carolina, Professor Tanure Ojaide, "Writing the Homeland: The Poetry and Politics of Tanure Ojaide" (Bayreuth African Studies Press (2002). He has published numerous essays on the video film phenomenon in West Africa, including the co-authored essay, “Evolving Popular Media: Nigerian Video Film,” (Research in African Literatures, 29/3, 1998), the first attempt to theorize this popular media. He is currently working on a book of essays on re-thinking Chinua Achebe in the literary debate on globality/locality and a full length study of the video film phenomenon in Nigeria, "Stories About the Postcolony: The Nigerian Video Film."
Dr. Okome is a Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany. Widely traveled, he has given lectures in Israel, Switzerland, Ghana, Germany, England, Italy, the US and Canada. Professor Okome is full professor of African literature and cinema at the Department of English, University of Alberta, Canada.
Naomi Nkealah
Ph.D candidate, Department of African Literature
School of Literature and Language Studies
University of the Witwatersrand
Johannesburg, South Africa
Email: naonkealah@yahoo.com
Scholar of the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD) at the Institut für Ethnologie und Afrikastudien, Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz, working on a Ph.D thesis on Women, Power and Visions of Change in Anglophone Cameroon Drama under the mentorship of Dr Anja Oed. Visiting scholar at the Institut from April to September 2009.
Research interests: Women and Islam in North African women’s writing; Nationhood in Anglophone Cameroon Drama; Feminisms in Africa; Gender and cyberspace.
Aderemi Suleiman Ajala
Department of Archaeology and Anthropology,
University of Ibadan, Ibadan. Nigeria.
Archaeology Building, Faculty of Science,
University of Ibadan.
0234 (0) 803 490 6801
E-Mail: asajala@yahoo.co.uk
Research Fellow, Georg Forster Fellowship of Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, at the Department of Anthropology and African Studies, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, mentored by Prof. Carola Lentz and working on a book manuscript on Yoruba nationalism, political ethnicity and violence in western Nigeria. Guest at the department between January 2009 and October 2009.
Research Interests: Ethnography; Public Health in Nigeria; Anthropological theories; Yoruba identity, politics and social movements.
George Olusola Ajibade
Department of Linguistics and African Languages, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria.
Email: ajibadeb@oauife.edu.ng, solajibade@yahoo.com. Tel: +234-806-210-9625
Dr Ajibade earned his doctoral degree in Yorùbá Language and Literature from the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria, on Ethnography of Ọ̀ṣun Cult in Osogbo Community in South Western Nigeria with emphasis on the Visual and the Verbal Languages of Ọ̀ṣun. Dr AJIBADE George Olusola teaches African literature and folklore in the Department of Linguistics and African Languages of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. Ajibade’s research interests are in African Cultural Studies, popular culture, critical social and literary theories and folklore. He is also author of a number of articles on Yorùbá cultural studies. He was a Research Fellow at the Institute for African Studies, University of Bayreuth, Germany, under project titled “Imagination, Aesthetic and the Global Art World (B4)” carried out under the Humanities Collaborative Research Centre of University of Bayreuth, Germany, 2000-2004. Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at the University of Bayreuth, Germany (2004-2005); and an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at the Institute of Ethnology and African Studies, University of Mainz, Germany in 2009.
Host: Dr Anja Oed