Akinwumi Adesokan
Feuchtwanger FellowAkinwumi Adesokan (born 1967 in Ibadan, Nigeria) is an acclaimed Nigerian writer, cultural scholar, and Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and African Studies at Indiana University Bloomington, where he has taught since 2018. He earned a first-class bachelor’s degree in Theatre Arts from the University of Ibadan and completed his Ph.D. in English at Cornell University in 2005. Adesokan has held fellowships and visiting scholar positions in Austria and at the University of California, Los Angeles.
He began his career as a journalist, writing for outlets such as The Guardian, Post Express, This Day, and the once-banned news magazine Tempo, where he contributed a weekly literary column. He is also co-editor of the Glendora Review, a Lagos-based journal of arts and culture.
Adesokan’s debut novel, Roots in the Sky (2004), won the Association of Nigerian Authors’ Prize for Fiction in manuscript form in 1996. For his literary and civic engagement, he has received numerous honors, including the PEN Freedom-to-Write Award (1998), the Hellman/Hammett Award from Human Rights Watch (1999), and a Villa Aurora Fellowship in Los Angeles. In 1997, he was briefly detained by the Sani Abacha regime after returning from a fellowship in Austria.
His scholarly work focuses on African literature, film, and culture, with a particular emphasis on the aesthetics and politics of Nigerian video film. His major publications include the critical study Postcolonial Artists and Global Aesthetics (2011), as well as numerous essays, reviews, and columns in international media. Adesokan is a member of several professional associations, including the African Literature Association and the Modern Language Association.
He lives in Bloomington, Indiana.