Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Seeking Funding for Research and Publication Project on Benin-City Natural Shrines

 Dear Brother Oluwatoyin (Toyin):

I re-echo several aspects of Brother Afolayan's very useful response to your clarion call seeking funding for your research and publication project on Benin-City Natural Shrines. Since this seems to be a serious project, I recommend that you contact the USA-based National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), very much a sister in funding prospects to the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), which usually funded several summer seminars and institutes for many of us as professors and independent scholars.

When, in my younger years, I reviewed projects for these fine American funding agencies, I remember a large funding for a similar project that two Pan-African scholars submitted on Masquerades in Nigeria. I, therefore, recommend that you contact the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Just Google NEA to find out funding eligibility and subsequent funding prospects for your useful-sounding project. Good luck,indeed, but let me know if you (i) need to know more, or (ii) need a consultant to assist with your proposed project on the Natural Shrines in Benin City.

Most certainly, we cannot thank SIR Toyin Falola enough for putting together all of us, who are with like-minded intellectual and scholarly interests.

A.B. Assensoh.   

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From: 'Michael Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, March 24, 2019 11:28 AM
To: usaafricadialogue; Yoruba Affairs; usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Seeking Funding for Research and Publication Project on Benin-City Natural Shrines

 

I thought I had your phone number but I realized I did not; otherwise, I would have just called you up. You have such a great idea, Toyin. If I were to do something this serious, however, I would affiliate myself with someone or a group of individuals actively involved in academia. Sourcing for money by an independent scholar might prove to be a daunting task. I would consider someone from that geographical area of Benin/Edo, say an individual like Francis Egbokhare, a well known professor at UI, for example; or Francis Odemerho, a long-time social scientist at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE)'s Geography Department, or even an American anthropologist with special interest in Benin/Yoruba culture/art/aesthetics etc., to work with. That might facilitate the success of your effort.

To the best of my knowledge, The West African Research Association (WARA) and the West African Research Center (WARC) often sponsor projects of this nature. You might want to visit their websites, which I don't have, and see what they have along that line of your interest. It's along shot, but you could even visit the UNESCO website and see if it is a possible sponsor of the project. What about the various Edo groups in the Diaspora? What about the palace of the Oba of Benin or even that of the Oni of Ife? Eh, you look for something lost even in weird places. Yoruba people call it "Ìwákúwàá."

Good luck on your enterprise, Toyin, and keep us in the loop if there is a headway.

Michael O. Afoláyan

On Friday, March 22, 2019, 3:25:18 PM GMT+1, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com> wrote:

                                                                                                               

                                                                                                        

                                               Seeking Funding for Research and Publication Project on Benin-City Natural Shrines

                                                                                        Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

                                                                                                       Compcros

                                                                         Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems 

                                                       "Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"

I am an Independent Scholar seeking funding for first hand encounters in investigating Benin natural shrines, a rich, but, to the best of my knowledge, an unstudied subject.

The project will illuminate relationships between Benin history and cosmology and the city's natural sacred spaces, explore the implications of conceptions of nature and of consciousness represented by the traditional understanding of those natural shrines, develop the contributions of those ideas to investigations of the nature/humanity dynamic across space and time, bringing them into alignment with environmental ethics initiatives around the world.

Research progress and findings will be published online for free access. Funders' names will be publicly acknowledged unless they request otherwise.

My work on Benin is visionary and scholarly, aesthetically enticing and conceptually powerful, as is evident at my blogs

"Great Benin"and "Olokun".

I self publish through online media for ease of access by myself and the public, leading to an output composed of 80 blogs on Blogger, 1,100 Facebook essays and rapidly rising, essays on the document archives academia.edu and Scribd, self created websites, YouTube videos and a book on Amazon.

An overview of my work and links to the publication platforms I use can be gained through my central website Compcros, which I am updating and refining.

I also publish in academic journals and books.

The recognition of the quality of my work has led to invitations to contribute essays to such strategic projects as the Oxford Encyclopedia of African Thought and the Palgrave Handbook of African Philosophy, along with invitations to other academic initiatives.

My publications on various platforms demonstrate a hunger to develop as expansive an understanding as possible of existence through exploring relationships between the visual and verbal arts, philosophy, and spirituality, across African, Asian and Western cultures.

My work also extends into the sciences, specifically, the philosophy of science, as represented by my essay " A Salute to the Elephant : Abiola Irele at the Intersection of Disciplines " and my paper at the 2005 Ubiquitous Computing Conference in Tokyo, Japan, "Navigating Spaces of Consciousness : A Dialogue", accessible at the Metapolis and Urban Life workshop proceedings.

Each piece of writing I do is like a window into the universe, a vantage point for peering into the totality, a path towards something that cannot be fully encapsulated,though compelling of the attempt to do so, a statement of vision adapting the ideas of Ulli Beier and Susanne Wenger on Yoruba cosmology in Beier's The Return of the Gods and of Mazisi Kunene on Zulu cosmology in Anthem of the Decades.

I am currently working on the project "Developing the Philosophical and Mystical Possibilities of the Coronation Ceremonies of the Oba of Benin", the statement of purpose and method of which is accessible at my blog "Great Benin". 

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Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
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