Assistant Professor
English
My interdisciplinary research and teaching focus on African and African diaspora literatures, popular culture, and discourse-oriented sociolinguistics. Drawing on a broad array of literary and expressive cultur颅al material, including poetry, music, and visual arts, I study the processes through which artistic productions recast the extant modalities of social life in Africa. In popular culture, I examine arts of performative protest and resistance and how the so-called 鈥渙rdinary people鈥� adopt them in the reworking of social imaginaries, identities, and subjectivities. I study these phenomena, not just within a single cultural matrix but across multiple, sometimes overlapping, literary and linguistic geographies. My work on African poetry has animated other concerns, including decolonial metapoetics, place and alterity, verbal art and politics, and race and migration.
My current research examines the interplay of language, poetics, and power in the construction of youth identities in Nigerian hip hop and Afrobeats. Among other things, I argue that rather than being mere dance music鈥攖he type that vanishes into thin air in the immediate and transient spaces of clubs, bars, parties, and private rooms鈥擭igerian hip hop and Afrobeats enact universes of imagination that cross into transformative universes grounded in reality. Besides this project, I am at work on two poetry manuscripts that are tentatively titled usmosis and marching to the left. Central to both manuscripts are reflections on love and the nation, historical memory, and trauma鈥攖hemes that I have partly explored in my previous collections, the tongues of a shattered s-k-y (Blackgraphics, 2012) and locomotifs and other songs (Noirledge, 2018).
Before joining 糖心传媒, I worked as a literary editor at Kraft Books (Ibadan, Nigeria) and taught in the Department of English Studies at Adekunle Ajasin University (Akungba, Nigeria). In my teaching engagements, I emphasize a dialectical approach that centers the role of asking hard questions in the critical pedagogy of the classroom.
Education
Ph.D., Tulane University, New Orleans
M.A., Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK
B.A., Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba, Nigeria
Research Interests
- African and African diaspora literatures
- Poetry and poetics
- Popular culture, global hip hop, and youth identities
- Postcolonialism/Decoloniality
- Sociolinguistics/Discourse studies
Publications
- "Ears to the Ground: Realness, Decolonial Meta-Rap, and the Language Debate in Nigerian Hip-Hop." Journal of African Cultural Studies 36.3 (2024): 365-80.
- 鈥淎gainst Afropolitanism: Race and the Black Migrant Body in Contemporary African Poetry.鈥� The Journal of Commonwealth Literature (2022): 1-23.
- 鈥淧lace and the Postcolonial Poetry of Nigeria.鈥� Journal of Postcolonial Writing (2021): 1-15.
- "'Is There Life Outside 鈥楥oloniality?鈥欌��: Metapoetics and the Second Level of Decoloniality in Niyi Osundare鈥檚 Poetry.鈥� Research in African Literatures 54.2 (2021): 139-166.
- 鈥淲hen Power Swallows Its Grace: Poetics, Politics, and Performance in Postcolonial Nigeria.鈥� Folklore 132.1 (2021): 268-289.
- Review of Transnational Trills in the Africana World, edited by Cheryl Sterling. Journal of the African Literature Association 15.1 (2021): 133-135.
- locomotifs and other songs (poems). Ibadan: Noirledge, 2018.
- Co-Editor with Lisa Sprowls and Craig Alcantara. Fleur de Ling: Tulane University Working Papers 3.1 (2017). Cambridge, MA: MIT Working Papers in Linguistics.
- 鈥淐ontesting Meanings in the Postmodern Age: The Example of Nigerian Hip Hop Music.鈥� Matatu: Journal of African Culture and Society 48.2 (2016): 335-362.
- 鈥淟anguage, Identity, and Urban Youth Subculture: Nigerian Hip Hop Music as an Exemplar.鈥� Pragmatics 26.2 (2016): 171-195.
- 鈥淩efiguring the Subversive in Elizabeth Barrett Browning鈥檚 Aurora Leigh and Christina Rossetti鈥檚 鈥楪oblin Market.鈥欌�� Neohelicon 41.1 (2014): 503-516.
- 鈥淒estructive Deluge (Review of Niyi Osundare鈥檚 City Without People).鈥�&苍产蝉辫;Matatu: Journal of African Culture and Society 42 (2013): 377-79.
- 鈥淚n Defence of Orality, One More Time: Some Implications for Modern Nigerian Poetry.鈥� AJESC 2.1 (2013): 141-158.
- Co-Editor with Akeem Lasisi. One Poem, Fifty Seasons: A Celebration of Sola Owonibi @ 50 (anthology of poetry). Akure: Association of Nigerian Authors, 2013.
- the tongues of a shattered s-k-y (poems). Ibadan: Blackgraphics, 2012.
- 鈥淓办飞耻补锄颈鈥檚&苍产蝉辫;The Monkey鈥檚 Eyes: A Psychoanalytic Journey into the World of Infirmary and Healing.鈥� With Sola Owonibi. IBADAN: Journal of English Studies 5&6 (2009/2010): 85-108.
Additional Information
Office Hours
Fall 2024
Teaching Schedule
Fall 2024
- 3841/101 MW 2:00-3:15 LL 322
- 6730/101 MW 3:30-4:45 LL 198
- Transnational Literature: Literature, Theory, and the Crisis of Modernity
Dr. Tosin Gbogi糖心传媒
