Education
- Ph.D. Yale University (Anthropology), 1987
- M.A. Yale University (Anthropology), 1982
- B.A. Cambridge University (Social Anthropology), 1980
- B.A. Yale University (Philosophy), 1978
Research
West Africa (Yoruba, Nigeria) and the African Diaspora (Haiti, Dominican Republic, Cuba), History of Anthropology, Social Theory.
Books
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- Activating the Past
- History and Memory in the Black Atlantic World
- Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010
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- Black Critics and King
- The Hermeneutics of Power in Yoruba Society
- University of Chicago Press, 1992
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- The Pan-African Nation
- Oil and the Spectacle of Culture in Nigeria
- University of Chicago Press, 2005
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- Beyond Words
- Discourse and Critical Agency in Africa
- uni,
Articles
2016 “Beyond Négritude: Black Cultural Citizenship and the Arab Question in FESTAC 77,” Journal of African Cultural Studies 28 (3): 313-326.
2014 “Modernization Theory and the Figure of Blindness: Filial Reflections.” In S. Miescher, P. Bloom, T. Manu, eds. Modernization as Spectacle in Africa. Indiana University Press, 41-61.
2013 “M.G. Smith on the Isle of Lesbos: Kinship and Sexuality in Carriacou,” New West Indian Guide 87 (issue 3-4): 273-293.
2013 “The Blood of Mothers: Women, Money and Markets in Yoruba Atlantic Perspective,” Journal of African American History 98 (1): 72-98. Special Issue on Women, Slavery, and the Atlantic World, ed. Brenda S. Stevenson.
2013 “Yoruba Ethnogenesis from Within,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 55 (2): 356-387. Online edition: Cambridge Journals Online.
2012 ““Matrilineal Motives: Kinship, Witchcraft and Repatriation among Congolese Refugees,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 18(1): 22-44.
2005 “Griaule’s Legacy: Rethinking ‘la parole claire’ in Dogon Studies,” Cahiers d’Études Africaines 177, XLV (1): 95-129.
2004 “Herskovits’s Heritage: Rethinking Syncretism in the African Diaspora.” In A.M Leopold and J.S. Jensen, eds. Syncretism in Religion: A Reader. New York: Routledge, 160-184. Reprinted from Diaspora 1 (3), 1991: 235-260.
2002 “On African Origins: Creolization and Connaissance in Haitian Vodou,” American Ethnologist 29 (2): 233-260.
2002 “On Imperial Spectacle: The Dialectics of Seeing in Colonial Nigeria,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 44 (3): 564-96.
1999 “Africa, Empire, and Anthropology: A Philological Exploration of Anthropology’s Heart of Darkness,” Annual Review of Anthropology Vol. 28: 577-98.