The panel is interested in how Soyinka’s works both deconstruct and reconstruct African culture and tradition; how he ruptures, shifts and equally preserves the boundaries of African culture and tradition within, say, postcolonial and decolonial studies
THE recently established Centre for Wole Soyinka Studies, University of Abuja, has announced its intention to organise a panel discussion on the works and career of the Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka, at the 2025 Lagos Studies Association, LSA 2025, which will hold June 17-21, 2025 at the University of Lagos, akoka Lagos.
To be chaired by Director of the Centre, Dr. Olabode Wale Ojoniyi, of theDepartment of Theatre Arts, the session will explore the theme: “Being neither here nor there: Continuity and Discontinuity in Wole Soyinka’s Works.”
Deadline for submission of abstracts is November 25, 2024.
The session’s description reads in parts:
“Since the LSA 2025 main theme is ‘Continuities and Discontinuities in African Studies, CWSS believes Soyinka is such an African iconoclastic writer whose works inherently exemplify such paradoxes of continuities and discontinuities of African cultures and traditions, particularly, the Yoruba culture and tradition of his people. As an undeniable Iconoclast, the irony of how Soyinka equally remains, arguably, an avowed cultural revivalist, through his works and numerous socio-political interventions, from his iconic role in the establishment of the National Association of Seadogs, the Pyrate Confraternity, for instance, against the background of the Yoruba cults of, say Osugbo, Egungun, Gelede and Oro, seems to also foreground such essential state of his mutability of ‘being neither here nor there’ as continuities and discontinuities may also suggest within the ideals of Negritude (which he criticises), culture and race retrieval, multiculturalism, hybridity, globalisation, cosmopolitanism and Afrocosmopolitanism. The panel is thus interested in how Soyinka’s works both deconstruct and reconstruct African culture and tradition; how he ruptures, shifts and equally preserves the boundaries of African culture and tradition within, say, postcolonial and decolonial studies.
The sub–themes include, but not limited to, the following areas:
- Soyinka’s Drama
- Soyinka’s Poetry
- Soyinka’s Prose/Fictions
- Soyinka as a Theatre Director
- Soyinka’s Autobiographical and Biographical writings
- Soyinka’s Critical Writings/Essays
- And other of Soyinka’s interventions interrogated within the praxis of continuities and discontinuities…
Abstracts to be submitted to:
Centre for Wole Soyinka Studies @ cwss@uniabuja.edu.ng and copied to Olabode Wale Ojoniyi @ bode.ojoniyi@uniabuja.edu.ng.
- Deadline: November 25, 2024.
- Note: Abstracts should have the following features:
- About 250 Words,
- The Name of the Author,
- The Institutional Affiliation of the Author (If any)
- The email & phone number of the Author(s)
- Short Auto–Bio of the Author.
Conference date and venue: June 17-21, 2025, University of Lagos.
Note: Accepted papers will be published in the Journal of Wole Soyinka Studies by the Centre for Wole Soyinka Studies, University of Abuja.
Content sourced from: https://ojoniyiolabode.blogspot.com/2024/09/being-neither-here-nor-there-continuity.html
