Biodun jeyifo biography definition

Biodun Jeyifo is Professor of African and African American Studies and of Literature and Comparative Literature at Harvard University, USA. He taught at Cornell University as Professor of English, at Oberlin College, at the University of Ibadan and at the University of Ife in his native Nigeria.

As a leading literary critic and cultural theorist who had attained great prominence in African intellectual circles for his analysis of modernity and its attendant social and cultural crises, he works on the complex connections between literature, critical theory, radical humanities scholarship and twentieth century progressive and revolutionary social philosophy.

His 1984 study of the Yoruba Popular Travelling Theatre is viewed by many as seminal in the study of African drama. Jeyifo’s early essays shaped critical discourse on dramatic works by Soyinka, winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Editor of the authoritative anthology ‘Modern African Drama’ (Norton Criti