Tejumola Olaniyan Memorial Lecture

“Bí a bá perí akọni, a ó fida lalẹ!” ~ When the soul of the beloved is addressed, it is right that the gestures be proper.
In a career that spanned over three decades, Tejumola Olaniyan pursued a unique, capacious, and generous vision of humanistic scholarship in the field of African literary and cultural studies, including the black world as a whole and extending beyond it. “My deep interest,” he once asserted with characteristic precision, “is transdisciplinary teaching and research. My goal is the cultivation of critical self-reflexivity about our expressions and their many contexts.”
The Tejumola Olaniyan Lecture was established in 2021 by the Tejumola Olaniyan family in partnership with UW-Madison Department of English and the Center for the Humanities, in commemoration of Teju’s generous vision of humanistic scholarship in the field of African, global Black literary and cultural studies. The UW-Madison African Studies Program now hosts the lecture, starting 2024, as part of its Africa at Noon series which continues the tradition of gathering scholars from across the world for thought provoking conversations about Africa and African diaspora research.


Speaker Profiles
6th Memorial lecture (April 16, 2025)
Density as Praxis: Story, Texture, and Scavenging
DOTUN AYOBADE
Assistant Professor of Performance Studies and Black Studies, Northwestern University
4th Memorial lecture (October 19, 2023)
Gathering Thoughts: The Anthology as an African Genre
TSITSI JAJI
Helen S. Bevington Associate Professor of Modern Poetry, Departments of English & African and African American Studies, Duke University
2nd Memorial Lecture (April 11, 2022)
Tragedy and Postcolonial Literature: From Greek to African Literature
ATO QUAYSON
Jean G. and Morris M. Doyle Professor in Interdisciplinary Studies and Professor of English, Stanford University
5th Memorial lecture (April 24, 2024)
Dis War Sef: Contesting Unhomeliness in Recent Anglophone Cameroon
JULIANA MAKUCHI NFAH-ABBENYI
Professor of English and Comparative Literature, North Carolina State University
3rd Memorial lecture (May 3, 2023)
In Praise of Wild Ecopedagogies
CAJETAN IHEKA
Professor of English, Yale University
1st Memorial Lecture (April 11, 2021)
Second Acts: Theatrically, State, and Popular Culture in an African Setting
MORADEWUN ADEJUNMOBI
Professor of African American and African Studies, University of California, Davis