Adélékè Adéẹ̀kọ́ (ah-day-lay-kay ah-day-eh-caw) is spouse of Táíwò and father of Ọmọ́táyọ̀, Adébọ́lájí, and Adédiméjì. He is, as they say in the United States, originally Nigerian. His last name translates from Yorùbá into English as the “crown of knowledge.” Do not count the audacity of his ancestors against him, please!

His college education began in Nigeria at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, that place fondly referred to as Africa’s most beautiful university campus. At Ifẹ̀, where Professor Ike Newsum, former chair of AAAS here at OSU, taught him in The Use of English (Freshman Composition) class, He received a B.A. in Education/English and an M.A. Literature in English. In 1991, he completed a Ph.D. in English from the University of Florida, Gainesville, where he also learned to be a Gator.

Right after graduate school, he and his family moved to the Rocky Mountain region in the US, and he taught at the University of Colorado, Boulder for 15 years, moved up the professorial ranks, and served as chair of the department of Comparative Literature & Humanities. He moved to The Ohio State University, Columbus, in 2006. Adéẹ̀kọ́ is currently a Humanities Distinguished Professor and served as interim chair of African American & African Studies Department from fall 2020 to spring 2023. Previously he was president of the African Literature Association and director of the Abiola Irele Seminar in Theory & Criticism at Kwara State University, Nigeria.

His teaching and research interests—about all of which he has published widely, directed undergraduate research projects, and mentored many graduate students—are in literary theory, American ethnic literatures, Yorùbá literature, speech act patterns, and Anglophone literatures of south Asia, Caribbean, and Africa. His current ambition is to complete what he believes will be THE book on speech acts in poetry.

Sample Publications

Adéèkó, Adélékè. Kọ́lẹ́ẹ̀jì Onígbá Méjì (New Bodija, Ibadan, Nigeria: Bookcraft Africa: 2022). [Yorùbá language translation of Femi Osofisan’s, Kolera Kolej (New Horn Press, Nigeria, 1975)]

Adéẹ̀kọ́, Adélékè. “Postcolonial Critique in Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther.” Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry 7, no. 2 (April 2020): 136–46. https://doi.org/10.1017/pli.2019.36.

Adéèkó, Adélékè. Arts of Being Yoruba: Divination, Allegory, Tragedy, Proverb, Panegyric. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017.

Adéèkó, Adélékè. The Slave’s Rebellion: Literature, History, Orature. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005.

Curriculum Vitae

Adélékè Adéèkó's CV.pdf

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