OGUNPITAN STEPHEN ADEBAYO

English Language

At the English Language department office

Appointment on Visitation important

Topic: VIOLENCE, TRAUMA AND TERRORISM IN AMERICAN AND NIGERIAN NOVELS

Description: I have attempted to tackle an apparent critical gap in comparative literary scholarship foregrounded in postcolonial analytical framework. Using novels on the American and the Nigerian Civil Wars to identify and to situate sociological functions, I have been able to show the power of war fiction narratology in exploring how war and trauma impact on the individual and on a nation s psyche, which hitherto have not been acknowledged, or have been less evident in existing works. My research work succeeds in opening a relatively new vista in the American/Nigerian comparative war literature scholarship. This has graduated to a full blown literature of terrorism study, especially American and Nigerian novels after the September 2011 Terrorist attacks. I have tried to investigate how fiction helps our understanding of terrorism and trauma, paying special attention to the aesthetic, ethical and epistemological implications. I have drawn attention to the re-imagining and interrogation of war, terrorism and sundry seismic social upheavals around our world in the works of fiction written in the United States of America and Nigeria since September 11, 2011. This is a pertinent and an invaluable inter-disciplinary and cross-cultural contribution to terrorism studies which remains a global challenge around the world .My research work has also tried to address questions of race, cultural assumptions,trauma survivorship, in fictive literature.

#	Certificate	School	Year
1.	Ph.D (English)	Department of English, University of Ibadan	2003

Towards a Theory of African War Narratives

The book project consists of contributions from twelve scholars across Nigerian universities. Each contributor is expected to adopt a suitable theoretical and methodological framework The book is divided into 12 sections: INTRODUCTION, WAR NOVELS FROM EAST and CENTRAL AFRICA, WAR NOVELS FROM SOUTH AFRICA, THE ZIMBABWEAN WOMEN and WAR, THE WAR NOVELS OF THEODORA EZEIGBO, CHIMAMANDA ADICHIES WAR NOVEL, THE WAR NOVELS OF TSITSI DANGEREMBA, WAR PLAYS, GUERILLA WAR STORIES IN THE AFRICAN NOVEL, THE CHILD SOLDIER IN AFRICAN NOVEL, THE LIBERIAN CIVIL WAR, WAR AND POETRY.Why do men fight? Why has world history been described as largely a record of rebellions, revolutions, crises and wars? Why is it that at any moment in history there is a war of some sort going on somewhere in the world? Why are the worlds national and international systems prone to violence? Why is it that almost every country in the world today has one military establishment or the other? Why does war seem to appear to be a normal feature of world society? Why are there so much novels, poems, plays, memoirs, chronicles, comments, etc on the subject of war?Is man naturally violent, as some theorists have tendered? Or is violence only caused by deprivation, pain, or frustration, or by environmental circumstances? Or can we attribute it primarily to an intense expression of the emotions of anger, hate, fear, rivalry, revenge, or shall we say it grows out of the irrational impulses to dominate, hurt, and destroy? Or is it a means to prevent or compel acts by others?

OGUNPITAN STEPHEN is a Associate Professor / Reader at the Department of English Language

OGUNPITAN has a Ph.D in English from Department of English, University of Ibadan