Saheed Aderinto
Professor Saheed Aderinto, a filmmaker and the Founding President of the Lagos Studies Association, is the author of “Animality and Colonial Subjecthood in Africa: The Human and Nonhuman Creatures of Nigeria” (Ohio University Press/New African Histories Series, 2022), “Guns and Society in Colonial Nigeria: Firearms, Culture, and Public Order” (Indiana University Press, 2018), and “When Sex Threatened the State: Illicit Sexuality, Nationalism, and Politics in Colonial Nigeria, 1900-1958” (University of Illinois Press, 2015), which won the 2016 Nigerian Studies Association's Book Award Prize for the “most important scholarly book/work on Nigeria published in the English language."
His current book project, “Fuji: The History of An African Popular Culture” is under contract with the University of Chicago Press. The first episode of his debut documentary film, “The Fuji Documentary,” premiered in February 2024. Since then, it has been screened at academic conferences, documentary film festivals, public spaces, and university campuses in Africa, Europe, and North America.
Critics, which include popular culture scholars, historians, and filmmakers, described The Fuji Documentary as “a landmark in popular music documentation,” “a must-see,” “powerful,” “trailblazing,” “an oratorical-historical masterpiece” by “a master of the subject and a brilliant visual narratologist.”
In 2023, Aderinto won the $300,000 Dan David Prize—the largest history prize in the world—in recognition of his “outstanding scholarship that illuminates the past and seeks to anchor public discourse in a deeper understanding of history.”
Personal Website: saheedaderinto.com
His current book project, “Fuji: The History of An African Popular Culture” is under contract with the University of Chicago Press. The first episode of his debut documentary film, “The Fuji Documentary,” premiered in February 2024. Since then, it has been screened at academic conferences, documentary film festivals, public spaces, and university campuses in Africa, Europe, and North America.
Critics, which include popular culture scholars, historians, and filmmakers, described The Fuji Documentary as “a landmark in popular music documentation,” “a must-see,” “powerful,” “trailblazing,” “an oratorical-historical masterpiece” by “a master of the subject and a brilliant visual narratologist.”
In 2023, Aderinto won the $300,000 Dan David Prize—the largest history prize in the world—in recognition of his “outstanding scholarship that illuminates the past and seeks to anchor public discourse in a deeper understanding of history.”
Personal Website: saheedaderinto.com
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Books by Saheed Aderinto
Africa has a long and fascinating history and is a place of growing importance in the world history curriculum. This detailed encyclopedia covers the history of African kingdoms from antiquity through the mid-19th century, tracing the dynasties' ties to modern globalization and influences on world culture before, during, and after the demise of the slave trade. Along with an exploration of African heritage, this reference is rich with firsthand accounts of Africa through the oral traditions of its people and the written journals of European explorers, missionaries, and travelers who visited Africa from the 15th century and onward.
Alphabetically arranged entries cover a particular kingdom and feature information on the economic, cultural, religious, political, social, and environmental history of the regime. The content references popular culture, movies, and art that present contemporary reenactments of kingdoms, emphasizing the importance of history in shaping modern ideas. Other features include primary source documents, a selected bibliography of print and electronic resources, and dozens of sidebars containing key facts and interesting trivia.
Features
Provides relevant perspective on globalization in the pre-modern era, documenting how humans across time and places have shared various components of custom ranging from food, language, and music to religion and spirituality
Supports common core standards
Includes primary documents for enhancing critical thinking and research skills
Features cross references and suggestions for further reading
Highlights key facts and interesting trivia through illuminating sidebars
As Saheed Aderinto shows, British colonizers saw prostitution as an African form of sexual primitivity and a problem to be solved as part of imperialism's "civilizing mission". He details the Nigerian response to imported sexuality laws and the contradictory ways both African and British reformers advocated for prohibition or regulation of prostitution. Tracing the tensions within diverse groups of colonizers and the colonized, he reveals how wrangling over prostitution camouflaged the negotiating of separate issues that threatened the social, political, and sexual ideologies of Africans and Europeans alike.
The first book-length project on sexuality in early twentieth century Nigeria, When Sex Threatened the State combines the study of a colonial demimonde with an urban history of Lagos and a look at government policy to reappraise the history of Nigerian public life."
"A rigorous and innovative study of illicit sexuality and attempts at regulating it in colonial Lagos. . . . Without question the most detailed and systematic examination of prostitution in west Africa. . . . This is an innovative, well-researched, and extremely valuable work of scholarship."--Steven Pierce, author of Farmers and the State in Colonial Kano: Land Tenure and the Legal Imagination
"A significant contribution to Nigerian and African historical studies as well as to the study of sex and sexuality within the British Empire."--Gloria Chuku, author of Igbo Women and Economic Transformation in Southeastern Nigeria"
http://www.c-s-p.org/Flyers/The-Third-Wave-of-Historical-Scholarship-on-Nigeria--Essays-in-Honor-of-Ayodeji-Olukoju1-4438-3994-9.htm""
In spite of current problems in Nigeria and its universities, that historical scholarship on Nigeria (and by extension, Africa) has come of age is indisputable. From a country that struggled for Western academic recognition in the 1950s to one that by the 1980s had emerged as one of the most studied countries in Africa, Nigeria is not only one of the early birthplaces of modern African history, but has also produced members of the first generation of African historians whose contributions to the development and expansion of modern African history is undeniable. Like their counterparts working on other parts of the world, these scholars have been sensitive to the need to explore virtually all aspects of Nigerian history. The book highlights the careers of some of Nigeria's notable historians of the first and second generation."
Papers by Saheed Aderinto
Africa has a long and fascinating history and is a place of growing importance in the world history curriculum. This detailed encyclopedia covers the history of African kingdoms from antiquity through the mid-19th century, tracing the dynasties' ties to modern globalization and influences on world culture before, during, and after the demise of the slave trade. Along with an exploration of African heritage, this reference is rich with firsthand accounts of Africa through the oral traditions of its people and the written journals of European explorers, missionaries, and travelers who visited Africa from the 15th century and onward.
Alphabetically arranged entries cover a particular kingdom and feature information on the economic, cultural, religious, political, social, and environmental history of the regime. The content references popular culture, movies, and art that present contemporary reenactments of kingdoms, emphasizing the importance of history in shaping modern ideas. Other features include primary source documents, a selected bibliography of print and electronic resources, and dozens of sidebars containing key facts and interesting trivia.
Features
Provides relevant perspective on globalization in the pre-modern era, documenting how humans across time and places have shared various components of custom ranging from food, language, and music to religion and spirituality
Supports common core standards
Includes primary documents for enhancing critical thinking and research skills
Features cross references and suggestions for further reading
Highlights key facts and interesting trivia through illuminating sidebars
As Saheed Aderinto shows, British colonizers saw prostitution as an African form of sexual primitivity and a problem to be solved as part of imperialism's "civilizing mission". He details the Nigerian response to imported sexuality laws and the contradictory ways both African and British reformers advocated for prohibition or regulation of prostitution. Tracing the tensions within diverse groups of colonizers and the colonized, he reveals how wrangling over prostitution camouflaged the negotiating of separate issues that threatened the social, political, and sexual ideologies of Africans and Europeans alike.
The first book-length project on sexuality in early twentieth century Nigeria, When Sex Threatened the State combines the study of a colonial demimonde with an urban history of Lagos and a look at government policy to reappraise the history of Nigerian public life."
"A rigorous and innovative study of illicit sexuality and attempts at regulating it in colonial Lagos. . . . Without question the most detailed and systematic examination of prostitution in west Africa. . . . This is an innovative, well-researched, and extremely valuable work of scholarship."--Steven Pierce, author of Farmers and the State in Colonial Kano: Land Tenure and the Legal Imagination
"A significant contribution to Nigerian and African historical studies as well as to the study of sex and sexuality within the British Empire."--Gloria Chuku, author of Igbo Women and Economic Transformation in Southeastern Nigeria"
http://www.c-s-p.org/Flyers/The-Third-Wave-of-Historical-Scholarship-on-Nigeria--Essays-in-Honor-of-Ayodeji-Olukoju1-4438-3994-9.htm""
In spite of current problems in Nigeria and its universities, that historical scholarship on Nigeria (and by extension, Africa) has come of age is indisputable. From a country that struggled for Western academic recognition in the 1950s to one that by the 1980s had emerged as one of the most studied countries in Africa, Nigeria is not only one of the early birthplaces of modern African history, but has also produced members of the first generation of African historians whose contributions to the development and expansion of modern African history is undeniable. Like their counterparts working on other parts of the world, these scholars have been sensitive to the need to explore virtually all aspects of Nigerian history. The book highlights the careers of some of Nigeria's notable historians of the first and second generation."