Book Presentation:
Beyond the Boundaries: Toyin Falola and the Art of Genre-Bending
On the Occasion of the Africa History Conference at the University of North Carolina Wilmington
By dele jegede
Professor, Miami University. Oxford. Ohio
October 12, 2013
Professor Oloruntoyin Omoyeni Falola, please step forward.
Participants, please rise. I request that you join me in recognizing in our midst, the presence of the primary reason why we are convoked here today.
It is my distinct honor, on behalf of Professor Nana Akua Amposah, the History Department of University of North Carolina, your peers, students, protégés, and teeming admirers in Africa, the United States, and the African Diaspora at large, to present to you the book, Beyond the Boundaries: Toyin Falola and the Art of Genre-Bending, in collective celebration of your 60th birthday.
Preparatory to this event, there has been considerable discussion on USA Africa Dialogue Series, the same Pan-African listserv on global issues which, incidentally, you established. In this instance, you have successfully harnessed and deployed technology in the service of humanity. This is in accord with your doctrine, which espouses the process of work, which you enjoy far more than the outcome itself. In your words: "…[T]he process is much longer than the outcome [of work]; so that if the process is a pain, the outcome is just … a fleeting moment."
Your commitment to the process of labor remains one of the distinguishing characteristics of your life. This commitment began at an early age, despite the handicap of dropping out of high school after only two years at the age of 14, when you began to fend for yourself. You were born in the ancient city of Ibadan in January 1953. It was in Ibadan, the city of the legendary Lagelu, home to Nigeria's first university and location of Africa's first television station, that you imbibed the leadership skills that have distinguished you and led to the numerous honors and awards that your students, peers, associates, and eminent institutions have continued to bestow upon you. It was in Ibadan, too, that you acquired the uncompromising tenacity and ruthlessness of a taskmaster that even Alhaji Lamidi Adedibu himself would be proud of. For while you lack the notoriety that made the beloved Alhaji a notable figure in Ibadan politics, you certainly do not lack the academic rigor and indefatigability that have characterized your sterling achievements. Of course, Ibadan must equally be responsible for your facility with witticisms and jocularity: your knack for disrobing the powerful with mere words and painting unsuspecting guests in colorful satire. Indeed, yours is a mouth sweeter than salt; it is equally a mouth sharper than sword. Ibadan!
At age 17, you began your career as a teacher at an elementary school in Pahayi, Ilaro, in Ogun State, Nigeria. You taught briefly at Okebadan High School before leaving to study for the B.A degree in History at the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), in 1973. You had a short stint as a High School teacher at the Government College, Makurdi in Benue State from 1976 to 1977 and as Administrative Officer at the Public Service Commision, Oyo State for a brief spell in 1977. These short stints demonstrate a pattern: of restlessness and exploration—traits that have been become more manifest as you settled down to a career in the academy. In 1977, you accepted a faculty position at your alma mater at Ife. You would remain there for the next thirteen years. While at Ife, you plunged yourself furiously into what you love doing most: working. Between 1977 when you were hired as a junior faculty member, and 1988 when your department recommended you for full professorship, you had authored or co-authored no less than thirty-two articles in nearly all major journals in and outside of your field. During this same period too, you wrote, edited or co-edited a total of eleven titles. Undoubtedly, you have finally found your calling. The lack of challenge that kept you off the high school teaching job, where you could have become, with time, a harmless principal, or the boredom that prevented you from settling down to a humbling civil service routine where, all things being equal, you could have risen to be the chief civil servant with all the emoluments and benefits finally disappeared at Ife. And your senior colleagues signaled their approval with your endorsement to the professoriate. It is remarkable, in this case, to note that from the time that you accepted the position at Ife in 1977 to your recommendation to be full professor in 1988, it was only a short span of a mere eleven years. This must rank perhaps as one of the fastest climbs of the academic ladder in Nigeria. Remarkably, it was during this 11-year span that you also studied for and earned your doctorate degree.
Upon leaving York University in 1991 as Visiting Professor in the History Department, you moved to the University of Texas at Austin, where you have since established yourself as a notable scholar of History, a pre-eminent global historian, an intellectual of prodigious capacity, a leader of impeccable character, a compassionate teacher and advisor, and a generous individual whose capacity for work remains alarmingly constant. Between 1995 and 2012, you were the Frances Higginbotham Nalle Centennial Professor in History. Today, you are the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair Professor in the Humanities and a Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. In June this year, the University of Texas System Board of Regents wrote to congratulate you for your selection as one of the recipients of the prestigious Regents' Outstanding Teaching Award. The Board of Regents acknowledged that you have "made phenomenal accomplishments" with this feat.
You are the author of numerous books, including Violence in Nigeria: The Crisis of Religious Politics and Secular Ideologies, The Power and African Cultures, and Nationalism and African Intellectuals, all from the University of Rochester Press. You are the Series Editor of Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora; Series Editor of the Culture and Customs of Africa by Greenwood Press; Series Editor of Classic Authors and Texts on Africa by Africa World Press; and Series Editor of Carolina Studies on Africa and the Black World.
You are the recipient of numerous awards and honors at the University of Texas at Austin, including the Jean Holloway Award for Teaching Excellence; The Texas Exes Teaching Award; the Chancellor's Council Outstanding Teaching Award; Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award; and the Career Research Excellence Award. Your life-time career awards include the Nigerian Diaspora Academic Prize; the Felix E. Udogu Africa Award; the Cheikh Anta Diop Award; the Amistad Award; the SIRAS Award for Outstanding Contribution to African Studies; and the Africana Studies Distinguished Global Scholar Lifetime Achievement Award (Indiana University Purdue University, Indianapolis). You are Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters; Fellow of the Historical Society of Nigeria; and the recipient of the Distinguished Africanist Award by the African Studies Association, among many others. In addition, you received the Cecil B Currey Award for your book, Economic Reforms and Modernization in Nigeria; the Herskovits' finalist award for A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt; the Nigerian Studies Association's Best Book Award for Colonialism and Violence in Nigeria; and the Conover-Porter's Finalist Certificate for Key Events in African History: A Reference Guide.
For your distinguished contribution to the study of Africa, your students and colleagues have presented you with a set of three Festschriften, two edited by Adebayo Oyebade, The Transformation of Nigeria: Essays in Honor of Toyin Falola and The Foundations of Nigeria: Essays in Honor of Toyin Falola, and one by Akin Ogundiran, Precolonial Nigeria: Essays in Honor of Toyin Falola. A recent book, Toyin Falola: The Man, Mask and Muse, which presents bio-critical studies, is a thousand pages long.
Your memoir, A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt, captures your childhood and has received various awards. You were awarded the honorary Doctor of Humanities of the Monmouth University, USA in 2007; the Doctor of Letters of Adekunle Ajasin University, Nigeria in 2013; and the honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the City University of New York, Staten Island, also in 2013. You are the current Chair of the Herskovits Prize for the ASA; a member of the M, Klein Book prize for the AHA; the Joel Gregory Prize for the Canadian Association of African Studies; the current Vice President of the International Scientific Committee; UNESCO Slave Route Project; and the Vice President of the African Studies Association, effective Nov. 2014.
Since 2004, you have received no less than 28 Lifetime and Career Awards from diverse bodies in an array of fields that range from leadership to scholarship, teaching to research, professional association to religious organization. In a year that you published a book on Esu, the Yoruba deity of the crossroads, the Christian Association of Nigerian-Americans selected you as the Top Nigerian-American Academic. It will be grossly mistaken to conclude that the awards and publications credited to you in this citation are exhaustive. You remain a fecund mind who produces at an incredibly rapid pace and on diverse topics in the humanities.
In addition to the 120 books or so that you have authored or co-authored, with twelve of these titles coming out in 2013 alone, you have continued to teach and serve on committees within and outside of the university. You remain an incredibly generous individual, who has used his status to honor senior scholars, compliment colleagues, and empower aspiring academics. You have graced several publications with introductions, reviewed an equally large number of titles, and convened many conferences, the most prominent of which is the annual Africa Conference of the University of Texas, which is now in its 13th edition. Yet, you remain as committed as ever to charting new frontiers of knowledge. You have indicated that you would like to write more books, create a new field in Contemporary Africa Diaspora Humanities, write two more memoirs, and improve on the textbooks that you have written. If you could turn back the hand of the clock, you indicated that you would write more for the general public.
At age 60, Professor Toyin Falola, you have been blessed with superb intellect, an incomparable capacity for compassion and empathy, unstinted generosity, and a bundle of energy that belies the attainment of this milestone. Yet, this book presentation is unique. It is in recognition not only of your achievements as a scholar and benefactor, but—and this is important—as an individual whose life has been spared to continue to do all the advocacy and humanitarian work that are an important part of your life mission.
At this point, may I invite Dr. Mrs. Bisi Falola to come to the podium. For behind your string of attainments is a gorgeous lady. Yes. This is a celebratory event. Attaining 60 is an incredible attainment. On this occasion, it gives me tremendous pleasure and honor to present to you, on behalf of all of your colleagues, friends, and students, this book, which Dr. Nana Amposah has labored so hard to bring to fruition.
Congratulations.
dele jegede, Ph.D
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