Moradewun Adejunmobi
Biographic Data
| ID | 125181 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Moradewun Adejunmobi |
| GIVEN NAMES | Moradewun |
| FAMILY NAME | Adejunmobi |
| SIGNATURE | ADEJUNMOBI M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Davis |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2916-647X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 33 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 84 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 32 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Handling and mishandling African language texts
Olaniyan’s legacy: Metacriticism in African literary and cultural studies
Tejumola Olaniyan: A bibliography
Male Waithood and Radical Transformation in A. Igoni Barrett’s Blackass
Male Waithood and Radical Transformation in A. Igoni Barrett’s Blackass
S’inspirant des nombreux travaux de recherche portant sur la transition de l’enfance à l’âge adulte d’un point de vue social en Afrique, cet article se penche sur le roman Blackass (2015) d’Igoni Barrett afin d’analyser les réactions au retardement du passage à l’âge adulte dans une population africaine dont la mobilité sociale est orientée vers le bas. Il examine la façon dont les diverses dispositions comprises dans le concept de « waithood » (…
Rethinking African literary studies as African studies and the politics of citation
Introducing Notes from the Field
Africa/Pleasure: An Agenda for Future Work
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the 'Save PDF' action button
Pleasures of the Nollywood Familiar and Everyday Life
Sequels, spinoffs, serials, and other kinds of generic works are prevalent in Nollywood filmmaking and popular with fans. These spinoffs and other generic works are characterized by a degree of familiarity, made evident in their repetitive and or affiliative dimensions. According to Adejunmobi, familiarity as a mode of media engagement in Nollywood generates specific pleasures connected to the repetitive dimensions of the films and television sho…
Major and Minor Discourses of the Vernacular: Discrepant African Histories
African autonomy and car culture
Postcolonial Automobility: Car Culture in West Africa is to my knowledge the first book-length study of the cultural significance of car culture in African literature and film. While there have bee
Routledge Handbook of African Literature
The turn of the twenty-first century has witnessed an expansion of critical approaches to African literature. The Routledge Handbook of African Literature is a one-stop publication bringing together studies of African literary texts that embody an array of newer approaches applied to a wide range of works. This includes frameworks derived from food studies, utopian studies, network theory, eco-criticism, and examinations of the human/animal inter…
Abiola Irele and the publicness of African letters
In his book, Little Magazine, World Form, Eric Bulson restates a widely held view about a change in editorial vision for the famous literary magazine, Black Orpheus, once, Ulli Beier, the founder of the magazine resigned from the editorial board. Beier left his position as editor in 1968, handing over the reins to Abiola Irele and John Pepper Clark. Commenting on the transition to a new leadership, Bulson writes that Irele and Pepper Clark's tenu…
Nollywood: Le Sujet Insaisissable
La forme esthétique et les infrastructures financières du cinéma populaire africain se sont transformées au cours des dernières années, entraînant une révision des paradigmes théoriques utilisés pour les étudier. Ce texte revient sur cette réflexion. Il se concentre sur trois aspects en particulier. Premièrement, je soutiens que l’analyse récente des infrastructures techniques, financières et institutionnelles qui permettent aux films africains d…
Les évolutions récentes du cinéma nigérian: Nollywood en débat
La forme esthétique et les infrastructures financières du cinéma populaire africain se sont transformées au cours des dernières années, entraînant une révision des paradigmes théoriques utilisés pour les étudier. Ce texte revient sur cette réflexion. Il se concentre sur trois aspects en particulier. Premièrement, je soutiens que l’analyse récente des infrastructures techniques, financières et institutionnelles qui permettent aux films africains d…
Reading BJ's Nollywood
This paper undertakes an interpretation of Biodun Jeyifo's writings on Nollywood in the light of his earlier work on Yoruba Traveling Theater. It approaches Jeyifo's reflections on Nollywood and Yoruba Traveling Theater as a basis for examining how scholars might address concerns about quality in assessments of African popular culture. In Jeyifo's more recent work on Nollywood, there is a tension between acknowledging that dissimilar forms of cul…
Afterword: Genre Queries, African Studies
This essay on genres acknowledges the constructed nature of the fluid classifications that form around recognized and recognizable types of creative work. Some systems of classification owe their recognition to powerful cultural intermediaries. Others, often located in the realm of popular culture, emerge without input from cultural intermediaries. As constructed groupings of works, genres matter for their ability to generate distinct circuits of…
African Media Studies and Marginality at the Center
The subject of this essay is the relative detachment of African media studies research from the discipline of media studies in North America. Although marginalization of African media studies is more commonly associated with scholarship produced outside North America and Europe, this essay argues for a recognition of its presence at the centers of global power. A number of institutionally configured firewalls perpetuate continuing marginalization…
Introduction: African Science Fiction
As recently as 2009, the Nigerian-American writer, Nnedi Okorafor could ask in a blogpost, "Is Africa ready for science fiction?" 1 She followed this up in 2014 with an equally provocative statement: "African science fiction is still alien." 2 Neither the question nor the statement represented her own convictions; instead they were intended as conceits to instigate conversation about a larger concern, namely
Rethinking African Cultural Production
Neoliberal Rationalities in Old and New Nollywood
This article focuses on shifts, or "new waves," within contemporary African film as sites of struggle and moments of exposure of the divergent forces at work in the struggle. From this perspective, attempts at initiating a new style in commercially oriented storytelling do not so much culminate in a break with previous styles of storytelling as they create a new space for tension over ideological claims and narrative coherence. As illustration, t…
The infrapolitics of subordination in Patrice Nganang'sDog Days
Patrice Nganang's award winning novel Dog Days illustrates a recent trend in African literature in French from the mid-1990s, namely a move away from narratives about rulers to narratives about the ruled, a move away from studying the socially dominant to analyzing the socially subordinate. This paper aims to foreground some of the thinking on social subordination in recent African literature by examining Patrice Nganang's Dog Days in the light o…
Nollywood, Globalization, and Regional Media Corporations in Africa
This article makes three arguments with respect to the interface between contemporary African and global media. The first is that regional media corporations represent a greater threat to local media production than global media corporations. Second, the threat often consists in seeking to co-opt rather than to suppress local media production, since these regional corporations do not actually stand to benefit from suppressing local production. Th…
Claiming the Field: Africa and the Space of Indian Ocean Literature
Claiming the FieldAfrica and the Space of Indian Ocean Literature Moradewun Adejunmobi (bio) As is well known to a restricted company of specialists in the English-speaking world, there are and have been for centuries, writers from the Indian Ocean world. There exist and have existed in the past significant literary movements and major authors. Nonetheless, I remain intrigued by the fact that the category of Indian Ocean literature has never quit…
Intercultural and Transcultural Literacy in Contemporary Africa
This paper argues that the challenge of intercultural communication has often been overlooked in discussions of indigenous language literacy in Africa. The omission continues despite the fact that literacy practices in Africa have often served as a means of intercultural communication, especially among highly educated Africans. Proposals for the adoption of indigenous language literacy are not likely to succeed unless a policy is developed that d…
English and the Audience of an African Popular Culture: The Case of Nigerian Video Film
The relationship between "foreign" languages, linguistic intelligibility, and African popular culture has long been the subject of significant misunderstanding. Founded on an extrapolation of principles first enunciated with respect to African literature and the realm of African popular culture, this misunderstanding has in time taken on the form of an unchallenged orthodoxy. According to the prevailing school of thought, cultural products in ind…
Neoliberal Rationalities in Old and New Nollywood
This article focuses on shifts, or "new waves," within contemporary African film as sites of struggle and moments of exposure of the divergent forces at work in the struggle. From this perspective, attempts at initiating a new style in commercially oriented storytelling do not so much culminate in a break with previous styles of storytelling as they create a new space for tension over ideological claims and narrative coherence. As illustration, t…
Nollywood, Globalization, and Regional Media Corporations in Africa
This article makes three arguments with respect to the interface between contemporary African and global media. The first is that regional media corporations represent a greater threat to local media production than global media corporations. Second, the threat often consists in seeking to co-opt rather than to suppress local media production, since these regional corporations do not actually stand to benefit from suppressing local production. Th…
Introduction: African Science Fiction
As recently as 2009, the Nigerian-American writer, Nnedi Okorafor could ask in a blogpost, "Is Africa ready for science fiction?" 1 She followed this up in 2014 with an equally provocative statement: "African science fiction is still alien." 2 Neither the question nor the statement represented her own convictions; instead they were intended as conceits to instigate conversation about a larger concern, namely
Routes: Language and the identity of African literature
The debate over the language of African literature has continued to generate significant interest ever since the emergence of African literary writing in European languages. Discussions of this debate have in the past often highlighted the inherently normative character of the idea of an African literature in African languages. By tracing the history of the debate, this paper seeks to distinguish between the actual role played by African language…
Africa/Pleasure: An Agenda for Future Work
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the 'Save PDF' action button
Pleasures of the Nollywood Familiar and Everyday Life
Sequels, spinoffs, serials, and other kinds of generic works are prevalent in Nollywood filmmaking and popular with fans. These spinoffs and other generic works are characterized by a degree of familiarity, made evident in their repetitive and or affiliative dimensions. According to Adejunmobi, familiarity as a mode of media engagement in Nollywood generates specific pleasures connected to the repetitive dimensions of the films and television sho…
African autonomy and car culture
Postcolonial Automobility: Car Culture in West Africa is to my knowledge the first book-length study of the cultural significance of car culture in African literature and film. While there have bee
Abiola Irele and the publicness of African letters
In his book, Little Magazine, World Form, Eric Bulson restates a widely held view about a change in editorial vision for the famous literary magazine, Black Orpheus, once, Ulli Beier, the founder of the magazine resigned from the editorial board. Beier left his position as editor in 1968, handing over the reins to Abiola Irele and John Pepper Clark. Commenting on the transition to a new leadership, Bulson writes that Irele and Pepper Clark's tenu…
Afterword: Genre Queries, African Studies
This essay on genres acknowledges the constructed nature of the fluid classifications that form around recognized and recognizable types of creative work. Some systems of classification owe their recognition to powerful cultural intermediaries. Others, often located in the realm of popular culture, emerge without input from cultural intermediaries. As constructed groupings of works, genres matter for their ability to generate distinct circuits of…
Reading BJ's Nollywood
This paper undertakes an interpretation of Biodun Jeyifo's writings on Nollywood in the light of his earlier work on Yoruba Traveling Theater. It approaches Jeyifo's reflections on Nollywood and Yoruba Traveling Theater as a basis for examining how scholars might address concerns about quality in assessments of African popular culture. In Jeyifo's more recent work on Nollywood, there is a tension between acknowledging that dissimilar forms of cul…
Les évolutions récentes du cinéma nigérian: Nollywood en débat
La forme esthétique et les infrastructures financières du cinéma populaire africain se sont transformées au cours des dernières années, entraînant une révision des paradigmes théoriques utilisés pour les étudier. Ce texte revient sur cette réflexion. Il se concentre sur trois aspects en particulier. Premièrement, je soutiens que l’analyse récente des infrastructures techniques, financières et institutionnelles qui permettent aux films africains d…
The infrapolitics of subordination in Patrice Nganang'sDog Days
Patrice Nganang's award winning novel Dog Days illustrates a recent trend in African literature in French from the mid-1990s, namely a move away from narratives about rulers to narratives about the ruled, a move away from studying the socially dominant to analyzing the socially subordinate. This paper aims to foreground some of the thinking on social subordination in recent African literature by examining Patrice Nganang's Dog Days in the light o…
Claiming the Field: Africa and the Space of Indian Ocean Literature
Claiming the FieldAfrica and the Space of Indian Ocean Literature Moradewun Adejunmobi (bio) As is well known to a restricted company of specialists in the English-speaking world, there are and have been for centuries, writers from the Indian Ocean world. There exist and have existed in the past significant literary movements and major authors. Nonetheless, I remain intrigued by the fact that the category of Indian Ocean literature has never quit…
African language writing and writers: A case study of Jean‐Joseph Rabearivelo and Ny Avana in Madagascar
History and Ideology in Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo's Prose Works
La fiction historique de Rabearivelo (réduite ici a L'Aube rouge et à L'Interférence) s'inscrit dans le contre-discours du colonisé, alternative au discours occidental sur l'Afrique. Cette fiction, écrite en français et donc moins suspecte au colonisateur, exprime cependant clairement la volonté de réhabilitation du passé malgache, à travers une habile intégration au récit de grandes figures authentiques (aristocratie et souverains dans L'Aube ro…
Routes: Language and the identity of African literature
The debate over the language of African literature has continued to generate significant interest ever since the emergence of African literary writing in European languages. Discussions of this debate have in the past often highlighted the inherently normative character of the idea of an African literature in African languages. By tracing the history of the debate, this paper seeks to distinguish between the actual role played by African language…
Disruptions of Orality in the Writings of Hampat B
In his study of Nigerian writing, entitled Strategic Transformations in Nigerian Writing, Ato Quayson recently proposed that we consider African literature as a mere precipitate of culture, but as a process of mediation upon it (16-17). On this basis, he further argues for increas? ing attention to be directed at establishing a typology of strategic filiations (160) between what he describes as resources and contempo? rary African writing. In oth…
English and the Audience of an African Popular Culture: The Case of Nigerian Video Film
The relationship between "foreign" languages, linguistic intelligibility, and African popular culture has long been the subject of significant misunderstanding. Founded on an extrapolation of principles first enunciated with respect to African literature and the realm of African popular culture, this misunderstanding has in time taken on the form of an unchallenged orthodoxy. According to the prevailing school of thought, cultural products in ind…
Polyglots, Vernaculars and Global Markets: Variable Trends in West Africa
Using a framework from cultural studies and focusing on theories put forward by Pierre Bourdieu, the goal in this paper is to consider how some West Africans interact with foreign languages and cultures in an era of global capital, especially when it comes to the activities of migrants venturing into overseas labour markets and to the production of cultural commodities at home. Looking at the language practices of members of Senegalese religious …
Foreign Languages, Local Audiences: The Case of Nigerian Video Film in English
Vernacular Palaver: Imaginations of the Local and Non-Native Languages in West Africa
Intercultural and Transcultural Literacy in Contemporary Africa
This paper argues that the challenge of intercultural communication has often been overlooked in discussions of indigenous language literacy in Africa. The omission continues despite the fact that literacy practices in Africa have often served as a means of intercultural communication, especially among highly educated Africans. Proposals for the adoption of indigenous language literacy are not likely to succeed unless a policy is developed that d…
Claiming the Field: Africa and the Space of Indian Ocean Literature
Claiming the FieldAfrica and the Space of Indian Ocean Literature Moradewun Adejunmobi (bio) As is well known to a restricted company of specialists in the English-speaking world, there are and have been for centuries, writers from the Indian Ocean world. There exist and have existed in the past significant literary movements and major authors. Nonetheless, I remain intrigued by the fact that the category of Indian Ocean literature has never quit…
Nollywood, Globalization, and Regional Media Corporations in Africa
This article makes three arguments with respect to the interface between contemporary African and global media. The first is that regional media corporations represent a greater threat to local media production than global media corporations. Second, the threat often consists in seeking to co-opt rather than to suppress local media production, since these regional corporations do not actually stand to benefit from suppressing local production. Th…
The infrapolitics of subordination in Patrice Nganang'sDog Days
Patrice Nganang's award winning novel Dog Days illustrates a recent trend in African literature in French from the mid-1990s, namely a move away from narratives about rulers to narratives about the ruled, a move away from studying the socially dominant to analyzing the socially subordinate. This paper aims to foreground some of the thinking on social subordination in recent African literature by examining Patrice Nganang's Dog Days in the light o…
Rethinking African Cultural Production
Neoliberal Rationalities in Old and New Nollywood
This article focuses on shifts, or "new waves," within contemporary African film as sites of struggle and moments of exposure of the divergent forces at work in the struggle. From this perspective, attempts at initiating a new style in commercially oriented storytelling do not so much culminate in a break with previous styles of storytelling as they create a new space for tension over ideological claims and narrative coherence. As illustration, t…
African Media Studies and Marginality at the Center
The subject of this essay is the relative detachment of African media studies research from the discipline of media studies in North America. Although marginalization of African media studies is more commonly associated with scholarship produced outside North America and Europe, this essay argues for a recognition of its presence at the centers of global power. A number of institutionally configured firewalls perpetuate continuing marginalization…
Introduction: African Science Fiction
As recently as 2009, the Nigerian-American writer, Nnedi Okorafor could ask in a blogpost, "Is Africa ready for science fiction?" 1 She followed this up in 2014 with an equally provocative statement: "African science fiction is still alien." 2 Neither the question nor the statement represented her own convictions; instead they were intended as conceits to instigate conversation about a larger concern, namely
Afterword: Genre Queries, African Studies
This essay on genres acknowledges the constructed nature of the fluid classifications that form around recognized and recognizable types of creative work. Some systems of classification owe their recognition to powerful cultural intermediaries. Others, often located in the realm of popular culture, emerge without input from cultural intermediaries. As constructed groupings of works, genres matter for their ability to generate distinct circuits of…
Reading BJ's Nollywood
This paper undertakes an interpretation of Biodun Jeyifo's writings on Nollywood in the light of his earlier work on Yoruba Traveling Theater. It approaches Jeyifo's reflections on Nollywood and Yoruba Traveling Theater as a basis for examining how scholars might address concerns about quality in assessments of African popular culture. In Jeyifo's more recent work on Nollywood, there is a tension between acknowledging that dissimilar forms of cul…
Routledge Handbook of African Literature
The turn of the twenty-first century has witnessed an expansion of critical approaches to African literature. The Routledge Handbook of African Literature is a one-stop publication bringing together studies of African literary texts that embody an array of newer approaches applied to a wide range of works. This includes frameworks derived from food studies, utopian studies, network theory, eco-criticism, and examinations of the human/animal inter…
Abiola Irele and the publicness of African letters
In his book, Little Magazine, World Form, Eric Bulson restates a widely held view about a change in editorial vision for the famous literary magazine, Black Orpheus, once, Ulli Beier, the founder of the magazine resigned from the editorial board. Beier left his position as editor in 1968, handing over the reins to Abiola Irele and John Pepper Clark. Commenting on the transition to a new leadership, Bulson writes that Irele and Pepper Clark's tenu…
Nollywood: Le Sujet Insaisissable
La forme esthétique et les infrastructures financières du cinéma populaire africain se sont transformées au cours des dernières années, entraînant une révision des paradigmes théoriques utilisés pour les étudier. Ce texte revient sur cette réflexion. Il se concentre sur trois aspects en particulier. Premièrement, je soutiens que l’analyse récente des infrastructures techniques, financières et institutionnelles qui permettent aux films africains d…
Les évolutions récentes du cinéma nigérian: Nollywood en débat
La forme esthétique et les infrastructures financières du cinéma populaire africain se sont transformées au cours des dernières années, entraînant une révision des paradigmes théoriques utilisés pour les étudier. Ce texte revient sur cette réflexion. Il se concentre sur trois aspects en particulier. Premièrement, je soutiens que l’analyse récente des infrastructures techniques, financières et institutionnelles qui permettent aux films africains d…
Major and Minor Discourses of the Vernacular: Discrepant African Histories
African autonomy and car culture
Postcolonial Automobility: Car Culture in West Africa is to my knowledge the first book-length study of the cultural significance of car culture in African literature and film. While there have bee
Male Waithood and Radical Transformation in A. Igoni Barrett’s Blackass
African history and culture studies (18 works) · Art (16 works) · History (16 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Political science (15 works) · History (10 works) · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Linguistics (9 works) · Literature (9 works)