Vincent R. Ogoti
Assistant Professor, English and Global Black Studies
Contact
Department of English
Office: 811 Strode
Email: vogoti@clemson.edu
Education
Ph.D. (African Cultural Studies and History), University of Wisconsin-Madison (2023)
Dr. Vincent Ogoti is an Assistant Professor, jointly appointed in the English and Interdisciplinary Studies departments. He was a Mellon Public Humanities Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Humanities, a Storytelling Fellow at MYArts, the inaugural African Studies Program Fellow at UW-Madison, and a Fulbright Fellow at Yale University. He is a scholar of biopolitics, subjecivity, and postcoloniality with a primary emphasis on global Black literature and culture. Dr. Ogoti is a storyteller and has authored and co-produced four plays, including A Shadow in the Sun (2019) and Echoes of Green (2025). He has taught various undergraduate and graduate courses, such as Science Fiction, Dramatic Literature, African American Literature, Cultural Studies, Africa and the Atlantic World, African American Literature 1920, and Postcolonial & World Literature.
Awards
Andrew W. Mellon Public Humanities Fellowship (University of Wisconsin-Madison); Fulbright Fellowship (Yale University);Ebrahim Hussein Fellowship for Research in African Expressive Cultures (University of Wisconsin-Madison); Joan B. Kroc Fellowship (University of Notre Dame); Idol-South Award (Clemson University)
Selected Professional Works
Books (In Production or Under Contract)
Colonial Heterotopias: Medical Fiction and Race Relations in East Africa (Ongoing)
Journal Articles & Book Chapters (Published)
“The Poetics of Second Liberation: Revisiting Aimé Cesare’s King Christophe.” Nordic Journal of African Studies, vol. 33, no. 3, 2024, pp. 203-218.
“Voicing Afro-Modernity: How Black Atlantic Audiobooks Speak Back.” Journal of African Cultural Studies, vol. 35, no. 4, 2023, pp. 392-407. (With Reginald Royston)
“Soundscape and Narrative Dynamics in Chinelo Okparanta’s Under the Udala Trees.” Journal of the African Literature Association, vol. 13, no. 3, 2019, pp. 291-305.
Journal Articles & Book Chapters (Accepted or Submitted)
“Narrating Fractures: Teaching Notes on Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing.” Journal of Global Postcolonial Studies, vol. 13, no. 2 (Forthcoming in Sept 2025).
Creative Works (Published)
Echoes of Green: A Play, Spotlight Publishers (EA), 2025.
A Shadow in the Sun: A Play, Pearls House, 2019.
Creative Works (In Production)
Masks for the Soul: A Play (Forthcoming).
Conference Presentations (Delivered)
“Displacement, Ruination, and Salvaging of Racial Relations in Hafsa Zayyan’s We Are All Birds of Uganda.” African Literature Association (ALA), Nairobi, Kenya, June 2025.
“Anatomies of Resistance: The Body Politic and Mau Mau Memory in Kenneth Watene’s Drama.” African Literature Association, Nairobi, June 2025
“Greening the Grassroots: Motherhood and Melodramatic Imagination in East African Eco-Drama.” African Studies Association (ASA), Chicago, December 2024.
“Braiding Peace: Drama and the Politics of Speaking of Violence.” University of Nairobi, Kenya. October 30-31, 2024. [Virtual]
“The Body and the Institution of the Imaginary.” African Literature Association (ALA), University of Louisville, KY, May 23-25, 2024.
“Globalization and Multiculturalism in East Africa: Yusuf Dawood’s Return to Paradise and Hafsa Zayyan’s We are all Birds of Uganda.” African Studies Association, San Francisco, December 2023.
“Animated Corpses: Martyrology and the Invention of a Parrhesiatic Figure in African and Caribbean Drama,” African Studies Association, Philadelphia, November 2022.
“Medicine for a Multiracial Nation: Yusuf Dawood’s Fiction and the Writing of the New Kenyan Multiracialism,” African Literature Association, May 2022.
“Creative Innovations in West African Literature: Accentuating Sound in Chinua Achebe’s Poetics.” Integrating West African Perspectives and Voices into the Curriculum Conference, Oakton College, April 2022.
“Islam in Post-genocide Rwanda.” African Studies Association (ASA), November 2021.
“Space Traitors: The Politics of Narrating Strategic and Structural Censorship in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Works.” African Literature Association, May 2021.
“Frontline Literati: Gender, Sexuality, and Academic Resistance in African Literary Studies.” African Literature Association, May 2021.
“Arts for Social Change and the Politics of Speaking of Violence in Africa.” Sustainable Peace Conference, Notre Dame, IN, October 2019.
“African Literature and Aurality in the Age of Audiobooks.” African Literature Association, Columbus, Ohio, May 2019.
“Images that Speak: The Politics of Visualizing Everyday Violence in Darfur.” African Cultural Studies Conference, University of Wisconsin-Madison, April 2019.
“Doing African Cultural Studies: The Idea of Africa and the Legacy of Afrocentrism.” AfriSem, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, April 2019.
“Border Crossings: Transnational Hip Hop and the Search for Alternative Future.” Critical Ethnic Studies Association Conference, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, June 2018.
“Telling the Truth Laughingly: Using Comedy to Challenge Ethnic Stereotypes in Africa.” Notre Dame Peace Conference, Notre Dame, Indiana, April 2016.
Conference Proposals (Accepted or Submitted)
“From Aural to Visual Archives: Pichadithi Comics as Cultural Resistance in 1980s Kenya.” African Studies Association (ASA), Atlanta, November 2025.
