Sakiru Adebayo, PhD

Assistant Professor

English, English and Cultural Studies

Office: CCS 379
Email: sakiru.adebayo@ubc.ca

Research Summary

African and African Diaspora Literature, Postcolonial Studies, Trauma and Memory Studies

Courses & Teaching

African and African Diaspora Literature

Biography

Born in a small town in Southwestern Nigeria, Sakiru moved to Ibadan to study at the University for Ibadan, Nigeria’s premier university. He later moved to Johannesburg, South Africa for his Ph.D. at the University of the Witwatersrand. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Wits Institute of Social and Economic Research (WISER) for a year. He is very excited to be a part of the UBC community in the Okanagan valley.

Degrees

B.A. English, University of Ibadan; M.A. English, University of Ibadan; Ph.D. African Literature, University of the Witwatersrand; Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Wits Institute of Social and Economic Research (WISER)

Selected Publications & Presentations

Post-apartheid Melancholia: Navigating Loss and (be)Longing in South Africa. Social Dynamics: A Journal of African Studies, forthcoming in Volume 48, Issue 2.

The Anatomy of Oblivion in Jose Agualusa’s A General Theory of Oblivion. Journal of African Literature Association, published online, February 18, 2022.

Living in a Permanent Wake: the Cinematic and Affective Prisms of Mourning in Zulu Love Letter. Accepted by the Journal of African Cinemas, forthcoming in January 2022.

Speaking About the Dead in the Present Tense: Half of a Yellow Sun as a Work of Postmemory. Research in African Literatures, Volume 52, Issue 2, 2021.

Unmournable Bodies, Embodied Monuments and Bodily Truths: Rethinking Reconciliation in  Zulu Love Letter. SAFUNDI, Volume 21, Issue 4, 2020.

This Uprising Will Bring Out The Beast In Us: The Cultural Afterlife of ‘Beasts of No Nation’. Journal of African Studies, Volume 32, Issue 3, 2020.

The Black Soul is a White Man’s Artifact? Post-coloniality, Post-Fanonism and the Tenacity of Race(ism) in Igoni Barrett’s Blackass. African Studies, Volume 79, Issue 1, 2020.

Dis/ruptures of Home and Citizenship. Memory, Migration and Alternative Practices of Belonging in Dinaw Mengestu’s Children of the Revolution. Kairos: A Journal of Critical Symposium, Volume 4, No 1, 2019.

The Psychology of Oppression and Liberation in Mongane Serote’s To Every Birth its Blood. Journal of Pan African Studies 12.4: 231-248, 2018.

Selected Grants & Awards

African Humanities Program Postdoctoral Award, 2021 (declined).

THINK (Transforming Humanities Through Interdisciplinary Knowledge) Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2021

Professional Services/Affiliations/Committees

African Literature Association (ALA), African Studies Association (ASA), Memory Studies Association (MSA)