Adélékè Adéẹ̀kọ́
Humanities Distinguished Professor
He/him/his
510 Denney Hall
164 Annie & John Glenn Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210
Areas of Expertise
- Anglophone African literature
- African American literature
- Postcolonial literature
- Twentieth-century literary theory
- Yorùbá literature and orature
- Animist speech acts
- Comparative literature
- Visuality and orality
- World literature
- Yorùbá studies
Education
- PhD, University of Florida, 1991
- MA, Obafemi Awolowo University, 1985
- BA, Obafemi Awolowo University, 1982
Adélékè Adéẹ̀kọ́'s primary teaching and research interests, about all of which he has published widely and taught consistently at all levels, are Anglophone African literatures, African American literature and Anglophone postcolonial literatures. He maintains fervent teaching and research interests in deconstruction, twentieth-century literary theory and Yorùbá literature and orature. His main research preoccupation at the present time is to read up adequately on animism and language for the purpose of writing a book on the origin of speech acts in poetry. Adéẹ̀kọ́ hopes to be able to correlate features of earnest, written poems about social insurgency with verbal elements of incantations, spell casting, divination, panegyrics and other ordinarily “magical” uses of words.
Selected Publications
- Proverbs, Textuality, and Nativism in African Literature. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998.
- The Slave's Rebellion: Literature, History, Orature. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005.
- Arts of Being Yorùbá: Divination, Allegory, Tragedy, Proverb, Panegyric. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017.
- "Incantation, Ideophone, Reduplication, and Poetry." Savannah Review 3 (May 2014): 73-98.
- "Power Shift: America in the New Nigerian Imagination." Global South 2.2 (Fall 2008): 10-30.