CFP: Special Edition of Yoruba Studies Journal on Akin Ogundiran’s The Yorùbá: A New History
Toyin Falola
CFP: Special Edition of Yoruba Studies Journal on Akin Ogundiran’s The Yorùbá: A New History
Akin Ogundiran’s much-anticipated book, The Yorùbá: A New History, was officially released by Indiana University Press on November 3rd, 2020. This comprehensive genre-bending book covers two thousand years of history, and it delivers a radically different interpretation of many themes in Yoruba history. From the humanities and social sciences to natural and physical sciences, Ogundiran mobilized all the foundational branches of knowledge to write this book. His ease of collapsing disciplinary boundaries is unprecedented, and this yields new insights that will resonate with many fields of studies for a long time. He also implements the first theoretical agenda for writing Yoruba history. The book gives us the most precise and detailed periodization scheme, thereby providing scholars, writers, artists, and the general public with a new template for contemplating and rethinking Yoruba history. In this book, Ogundiran turns Yoruba philosophy and religion into a historical project and demonstrates the possibilities of writing the deep-time history of ideas. The book promises to become fodder for rethinking Yoruba Studies. The last paragraph of the book’s first chapter is an invitation for scholars to explore the new paths that Ogundiran has opened up: “the questions and themes that drive the wheel of this book, as well as its methodological plurality, lead to new answers that disrupt some of the canonical renditions in Yorùbá historiography and public performances of history… All of these challenge us to imagine Yorùbá history in new ways and to rethink what we believe we know about it.”
In response to Ogundiran’s call of action, the Yoruba Studies Review will dedicate a special issue to examine what is new in The Yoruba: A New History. Scholars from diverse disciplines are invited to contribute essays that interrogate the book on one or more of the following themes. The goal is to use this book to explore the state of Yoruba Studies and its future possibilities.
- Migrations in Yoruba history
- Yoruba Identity and the idea of the Yoruba as a community of practice
- Evolution of Yoruba political institutions, especially the ọba-aládé (divine kingship) institution
- The meaning of the Yoruba as a “house society”
- Urbanism and sociology of Yorùbá cosmopolitanism
- The controversy and disputes among contemporary Yoruba kings about seniority
- Implications of the book for writing sub-regional and kingdom history
- Chronology and periodization
- Political economy
- Philosophy, indigenous epistemology, and history
- Economic history
- Technology and history
- Regional Interactions and relations with non-Yoruba-speaking neighbors
- Inter-kingdom relations
- Gender, sexuality, and history
- Impacts of the Atlantic slave trade
- The Yoruba Diaspora in Colonial America
- The Yoruba in Sierra Leone
- Environment, climate change, and history
- Arts, visual culture, and Yoruba history
- Performative culture and history
- Language and history
- Myths and history
- The Ogboni in Yoruba history
- The Orisa Pantheon as a historical subject
- History of ideas
- Social theory and history
- Yoruba Studies and the disciplines
- Poetics and historical writing
Abstract submission, January 1, 2020.
Contact:
Professor Akintunde Akinyemi <akin...@ufl.edu>
Professsor Arinpe Adejumo: <agad...@yahoo.com>
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
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