Omoniyi Afolabi

Niyi Afolabi teaches Luso-Brazilian, Yoruba, and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin—in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and African and African Diaspora Studies Department.  He is an Affliate of the Warfield Center for African and African American Studies. He is the author of The Golden Cage: Regeneration in Lusophone African Literature and Culture, Afro-Brazilians: Cultural Production in a Racial Democracy, and editor of The Afro-Brazilian Mind and Marvels of the African World, among others. His scholarly interests range from Afro-Latin American and African studies (Lusophone Africa, Brazil, and Portugal) and Latin American studies, to broader issues of cultural studies, transnationalism, migrations, and exile. Through focused case studies or comparative approaches, he has published in the areas of culture, literature, and religion, drawing parallels between the centrality of Yoruba mythology in the African diaspora as well as the place of the African cosmological and strategic essences in the New World or global studies. Niyi Afolabi’s current research focuses on the interface between literature, historicism, and culture studies with particular focus on Afro-Brazil.