The Challenge from Yoruba Studies in the West

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Is there such a thing as a centre or centres of Yoruba Studies, the exploration of an ethnic group centred in Nigeria but also present in other parts of Africa and deeply influential in the African diaspora in the Americas?

If you want to study Yoruba civilization, its history, current state and possibilities, where is the best place to go?

Is it the universities in Nigeria's South West, where the Yoruba are concentrated, universities some of which, such as the University of Ibadan and Obafemi Awolowo University,  were fundamental to the creation of what is now known globally as African Studies, a shaping influence that continue to reverberate?

Studying at such universities ensures one is more readily enabled to immerse oneself in Yoruba life, although other locations in Africa and the efflorescence of Yoruba spiritual culture in the Americas also provide great opportunities for such study.

Given the centrality of Yorubaland to the culture and civilization being studied, why are the most powerful books I am seeing in this field in the last 11 years produced by Yoruba and non-Yoruba scholars in the US?

Am I inadequately exposed?

In my admittedly unsystematic exposure to publications in Yoruba arts,I wonder if the kinds of books I have encountered from scholars in the West are reciprocated by publications by scholars in Yorubaland.

Last month, Nov 2024, Toyin Falola at the University of Texas,  published Global Yoruba: Regional and Diasporic Networks.

In 2020, Akinwumi Ogundiran, then at UNC Charlotte,   published The Yoruba:A New History.

These are very ambitious books, representing decades, perhaps a lifetime of work.

What does it take to nurture such scholars and such scholarship?

 

[Toyin Falola]

Great questions you posed:

1. There are no well-established academic movements advancing a collective agenda.
2. There is no alliance between cultural and political movements.
3. We don’t have the equivalent of the Brazillian Model, as in Ile Aiye and similar ones.

 

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAGBtzfP_qXGHeXYUnWJTwSDbJZ0Q2ibMNdR6u6tbeFWgPKHCgw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Great thanks prof Falola

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/BYAPR06MB4517B8E5ABF6064FF2DF9096F80C2%40BYAPR06MB4517.namprd06.prod.outlook.com.

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

I wish you could elaborate on these points prof

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Yoruba Affairs" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to yorubaaffair...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/yorubaaffairs/CAGBtzfN1w2kiEH2mOUMYoddBCfjQvdoOjB%3DEizMuD7WZLo4sFw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Dr. Oohay]

A HOUSE without STONY foundation ….

Almost any “original” fundamentally rich and substantive culture MUST first SOLIDIFY itself before haphazardly trying to PAN-AFRICANIZE a whole continent or even worse trying to GLOBALIZE; this problem even intensifies when applied to the geo-political entity called NAIJA (aka the sleeping elephant in the most “crowded room” in the second “BIGGEST house” in a zig zag row of mostly foundation-less houses ….

Oohay 

https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAGBtzfMBNcCuJ5vD_8B6m3FFoBVT1FAXg2X3EFT9iS-kmQCxgA%40mail.gmail.com

.

[Dr. Oohay]

If “Some Thing” does not (yet) exist BUT you consider IT worthy of existence, then begin trying to create it. If you fail at first, keep trying and trying but trying DIFFERENTLY each time again and again and again until you and others (or your successors) continue to labor (but NOT like a Sisyphus). May they be strong like Ogun). 

Oohay

https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/BYAPR06MB4517B8E5ABF6064FF2DF9096F80C2%40BYAPR06MB4517.namprd06.prod.outlook.com

.

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Amen

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/291964043.5846311.1735145980025%40mail.yahoo.com.