James Túndé Yékú is a Nigerian-Canadian writer and associate professor of African and African-American Studies at the

University of Kansas The University of Kansas (KU) is a public research university with its main campus in Lawrence, Kansas, United States. Two branch campuses are in the Kansas City metropolitan area on the Kansas side: the university's medical school and hospital ...

. He specialises in African literary and cultural studies, and digital humanities research. His research interests include:

African literature African literature is literature from Africa, either Oral literature, oral ("orature") or written in African languages, African and Afro-Asiatic languages, Afro-Asiatic languages. Examples of Precolonialism, pre-colonial African literature can be ...

digital humanities Digital humanities (DH) is an area of scholarly activity at the intersection of computing or Information technology, digital technologies and the disciplines of the humanities. It includes the systematic use of digital resources in the humanitie ...

, Social media,

cultural studies Cultural studies is an academic field that explores the dynamics of contemporary culture (including the politics of popular culture) and its social and historical foundations. Cultural studies researchers investigate how cultural practices rel ...

postcolonial Postcolonialism (also post-colonial theory) is the critical academic study of the cultural, political and economic consequences of colonialism and imperialism, focusing on the impact of human control and extractivism, exploitation of colonized pe ...

and decolonial theories, and

Nollywood Nollywood, a portmanteau of Nigeria and Hollywood, is a sobriquet that originally referred to the Nigerian film industry. The origin of the term goes back to the early 2000s, traced to an article in ''The New York Times''. Due to the history ...

. He has published widely on different subjects across these fields. Yékú is the author of ''Cultural Netizenship: Social Media, Popular Culture, and Performance in Nigeria'' (

Indiana University Press Indiana University Press, also known as IU Press, is an academic publisher founded in 1950 at Indiana University that specializes in the humanities and social sciences. Its headquarters are located in Bloomington, Indiana. IU Press publishes ...

, 2022), and the poetry collection ''Where The Baedeker Leads: A Poetic Journey,'' which received an honorable mention for the 2023

African Literature Association African or Africans may refer to: * Anything from or pertaining to the continent of Africa: ** People who are native to Africa, descendants of natives of Africa, or individuals who trace their ancestry to indigenous inhabitants of Africa *** List ...

Best Book Award for creative writing. Yeku's poetry and essays have been published in various literary journals and mediums.

Education

James Yékú trained as a literary and cultural studies scholar at

Ibadan Ibadan (, ; ) is the Capital city, capital and most populous city of Oyo State, in Nigeria. It is the List of Nigerian cities by population, third-largest city by population in Nigeria after Lagos and Kano (city), Kano, with a total populatio ...

and

Saskatoon Saskatoon () is the largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Saskatchewan. It straddles a bend in the South Saskatchewan River in the central region of the province. It is located along the Trans-Canada Hig ...

. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees in English, and Performance Studies respectively at the

University of Ibadan The University of Ibadan (UI) is a public university located in Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria. Initially founded as the University College Ibadan in 1948, it maintained its affiliation with the University of London. In 1962, it became an independe ...

in 2008 and 2012 respectively. He earned his Ph.D. in English at the

University of Saskatchewan The University of Saskatchewan (U of S, or USask) is a Universities in Canada, Canadian public university, public research university, founded on March 19, 1907, and located on the east side of the South Saskatchewan River in Saskatoon, Saskatch ...

in 2018.

Career and recognition

Yékú was engaged as a lecturer at the University of Saskatchewan's Department of English from 2017 to 2018. A year later, he moved to the University of Kansas, where he is currently an associate professor at its Department of African and American Studies and the Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities. Yékú was the winner of the 2022

Pius Adesanmi Pius Adebola Adesanmi (27 February 1972 – 10 March 2019) was a Nigerian-born Canadian academic and author. He was the author of '' Naija No Dey Carry Last'', a 2015 collection of satirical essays. Adesanmi died on 10 March 2019, when Ethiopian ...

Early Career Research Excellence Award from the

Canadian Association of African Studies Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...

. His journal article "Akpos Don Come Again: Nigerian Cyberpop Hero as Trickster" in the

Journal of African Cultural Studies The ''Journal of African Cultural Studies'' is a biannual peer-reviewed academic journal covering research on African culture, including African literatures, both written and oral, performance arts, visual arts, music Music is the arrangeme ...

won the 2017 Abioseh Porter Best Essay Award of the African Literature Association. He has also received other awards and fellowships, which include a 2022 Center for Advanced Internet Studies fellowship in

Bochum Bochum (, ; ; ; ) is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia. With a population of 372,348 (April 2023), it is the sixth-largest city (after Cologne, Düsseldorf, Dortmund, Essen and Duisburg) in North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous German federa ...

, as well as a 2023 Cultural Entrepreneurship and Digital Transformation in Africa and Asia international guest fellowship at the

University of Mainz The Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz () is a public research university in Mainz, Rhineland Palatinate, Germany. It has been named after the printer Johannes Gutenberg since 1946. it had approximately 32,000 students enrolled in around 100 a ...

, both in Germany. In 2023, he had a stint at the

Humboldt University of Berlin The Humboldt University of Berlin (, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin, Germany. The university was established by Frederick William III on the initiative of Wilhelm von Humbol ...

as a recipient of the

Alexander von Humboldt Foundation The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation () is a foundation that promotes international academic cooperation between scientists and scholars from Germany and abroad. Established by the government of the Federal Republic of Germany, it is funded by t ...

Fellowship where he completed work on a new nonfiction collection, ''Ambivalent Encounters and Other Essays''. Yékú currently spearheads African Digital Humanities initiatives at the University of Kansas and co-organizes the annual African Digital Humanities Symposium.

Selected publications

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Yeku, James University of Ibadan alumni University of Saskatchewan alumni University of Kansas faculty Nigerian writers Digital humanities Canadian people of Nigerian descent Year of birth missing (living people) Living people