What is African Digital Humanities?
My project interrogates the continued rise of African digital humanities as a sub-field of DH and explores the intersections of traditional humanistic inquiry in Africa and digital technologies and computational methods. African digital humanities affirms the ways in whcih the internet and computer software have become more central in the scholarly labors of African humanities scholars. Several scholars in the field are producing digital archives, developing tools and using software-based platforms to interpret historical data and linguistic corpus, whole others question the political dimensions of technological systems often Block-Boxed as neutral.
Main Results
My fellowship project — an investigation of African digital humanities as the scholarly exploration of digitized and born-digital African cultural records — combines the methodologies from traditional humanities disciplines and computational tools. An aspect of it that focuses on the archival uses of social media was presented during a 2022 CAIS colloquium. With feedback from the CAIS community, I completed a journal article that has now been accepted for publication. Similarly, during my CAIS fellowship, I also completed a book manuscript on a related topic that sits at the intersections of algorithmic computations and literary discourses on social media.
Main Outcomes
Publication:
- Yékú, J. (2024, April 17). Social Media Images as Digital Sources for West African Urban History. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. Retrieved 22 Apr. 2024, from https://oxfordre.com/africanhistory/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277734-e-977.
Presentations:
- The University of Wisconsin-Madison, Africa at Noon: Topic: “The Archival Possibilities of Social Media.” Wednesday, March 1, 2023.
- Afrikakolloquium|Institute for Asian and African Studies, HU, Berlin: Cancelling Adichie: African Literature and the Algorithmic Politics of Social Media Outrage|November 8, 2023.
- Lecture Series, Department of Anthropology and African Studies, Johannes Gutenberg-University: “African Literature and Cancel Culture: The Algorithmic Age of Personality” (June 20, 2023).
- NELK Workshops: Goethe-Universität Frankfurt: “#EndSARS: Literary-Cultural Activism and the Afterlives of Hashtags” (June 6, 2023).
Main Research Topics
- Digital humanities
- African studies
- Social media
Curriculum Vitae
- Assistant Professor, African and African American Studies, University of Kanssas, 2019-present
- Lectuerer, English. University of Saskatchewan, 2018.
- Tutor, Use of English, University of Ibadan, 2010-2012
Lectures and Presentations
Future Presentations:
- The University of Wisconsin-Madison, Africa at Noon: Topic: TBD. wednesday, March 1, 2023
- #IAS_North Western University, Qatar. Virtual Book Talk: “Cultural Netizenship” (November 2, 20:22).
- Fellows Colloquium, Center for Advanced Internet Studies: “What is African Digital Humanities?” Universitätsstr. 104, Bochum, 44799 (October 12, 2022).
Future Publications:
- Peer-reviewed Journal article: “African Digital Literatures and the Coloniality of Data.” Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, 2022 (forthcoming).
- Peer-reviewed Journal article: “#MakeNigeriaGreatAgain: Donald Trump in Nollywood’s Social Media.“ The Black Scholar. (Accepted, 2023).