Sule Emmanuel Egya is a professor of African literature and cultural studies at Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida University, Lapai, Nigeria. His research interests include the intersection of literature and politics in Africa, feminism, cultural studies, and ecocriticism. Fellowships and awards he has previously benefitted from include PER SESH Writing Fellowship; the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship; the African Humanities Fellowship; and the Humboldt Talent Travel Award. He has written over one hundred scholarly articles and literary essays. He is the author of The Writings of Zaynab Alkali (2005); In Their Voices and Visions: Conversations with New Nigerian Writers (2007); Poetics of Rage: A Reading of Remi Raji’s Poetry (2011); Nation, Power, and Dissidence in Third Generation Nigerian Poetry (2014); and Niyi Osundare: a Literary Biography (2017). He is also a creative writer. His first novel Sterile Sky (2012) won the 2013 Commonwealth Book Prize for the Africa Region. Makwala (2018) is his second novel. His poetry volumes include What the Sea Told Me (2009, winner of ANA Gabriel Okara Prize), Naked Sun (2006), and Knifing Tongues (2005).
RCC Research Project: Eco-Aesthetics, Environmental Justice, and Social Transformation in Contemporary Nigeria
Lunchtime Colloquium Video - "'Contemporary Nigerian Literature: An Ecocritical Reading"
Selected Publications:
- “Sexualized Body, Exploited Environment: A Feminist Ecocritical Reading of Kaine Agary’s Yellow-Yellow and Christine Watson’s Tiny Sunbird Far Away.” Journal of the African Literature Association (2018): 1–13. DOI: 10.1080/21674736.2018.1503928.
- “The Pristine Past, the Plundered Present: Nature as Lost Home in Tanure Ojaide’s Poetry.” Journal of Commonwealth Literature (2018): 1–15. DOI: 10.1177/0021989418777852.
- “Literary Militancy and Helon Habila’s Oil on Water.” Research in African Literatures 48, no. 4 (2017): 94–104.
- “Nature, Animism, and Humanity in Anglophone Nigerian Poetry.” In Natures of Africa: Ecocriticism and Animal Studies in Contemporary Cultural Forms, edited by Fiona Moolla, 257–75. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2016.
- “Nature and the Environmentalism of the Poor: Eco-poetry from the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria.” Journal of African Cultural Studies 28, no. 1 (2015): 1–12.
- “Eco-human Engagement in Recent Nigerian Poetry in English.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 49, no. 1 (2013): 60–70.