Nigerian scholar, Tejumola Olaniyan, has died

A Nigerian scholar, Tejumola Olaniyan, passed on in Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America on November 30, 2019.

Olaniyan who died of heart failure was an internationally-recognized scholar of African, African American, and Caribbean literatures, post-colonial studies, genre studies and popular culture studies. His work serves as a foundation for other scholars around the world in African and Diasporic studies.

English Department Chair at the University of Wisconsin Madison, Anja Wanner, described Olaniyan as a brilliant scholar and an extraordinarily dedicated mentor to graduate students and junior colleagues. “We are losing an adventurous interdisciplinary thinker and a colleague and friend revered for his humanity. His wisdom and intellectual generosity lifted us all.”

Olaniyan’s works include ‘Arrest the Music!: Fela and His Rebel Art and Politics’ nominated for Best Research in World Music by the Association for Recorded Sound Collections in 2005, ‘Scars of Conquest/Masks of Resistance: The Invention of Cultural Identities in African, African American and Caribbean Drama’ (1995) and several others.