Vincent R. Ogoti
Assistant Professor of English and Global Black Studies
Contact
Department of English
Office: 811 Strode; Fall 2026 Office Hours: Tuesdays, 2pm-4pm.
Email: vogoti@clemson.edu
Education
Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison (2023); M.A., University of Notre Dame (2017)
Research Interests
Subjectivity, Biopolitics, and Postcoloniality; Literature and Medicine; Drama and Theater; Migration and Literature; Sound and Literature, Science Fiction and Afrofutures.
Dr. Vincent R. Ogoti is an Assistant Professor of English and Global Black Studies. His research examines how the afterlives of colonialism shape political subjectivity in African and Black diasporic literature. He studies the institutional practices through which people are governed and the literary forms through which they contest those conditions. A central concern is ontological politics: how concrete practices constitute bodies and persons, with consequences for whose needs receive attention and whose claims carry authority. He approaches literature and performance as modes of political thought that bring close reading into conversation with institutional history. His current book project focuses on "Literature, Medicine, and the Postcolonial Hospital." It theorizes the postcolonial hospital as a category of literary analysis through Yusuf K. Dawood’s Kenyan hospital novels. The book argues that clinical practice enacted and contested colonial racial hierarchies, making the hospital an institution in which the promise of the postcolonial nation was simultaneously made and unmade. Dr. Ogoti has published peer-reviewed articles on African and Caribbean drama, visual cultures, sound and literature, and migration and the Black Atlantic. He is also a storyteller and has authored and co-produced four plays, including A Shadow in the Sun and Echoes of Green. His work has been supported by the Mellon Public Humanities Fellowship, Fulbright Fellowship, Ebrahim Hussein Fellowship for African Expressive Cultures, and Lightsey Fellowship.
Awards
Lightsey Fellowship (Clemson University); 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
Journal Articles & Book Chapters (Published)
“ Traveling Images: Photography and the Poetics of Visual Peace in Kenya .” Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies, 2026.
“ Specters of the Self: Anxiety, Political Subjectivity, and Ebrahim Hussein's Mashetani.” Journal of African Literature Association, 2026.
“ Narrating Fractures: Teaching Notes on Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing .” Journal of Global Postcolonial Studies, vol. 13 (2), 2025, pp.247-262.
“ Unbreakable Bodies: The Maji Maji Rebellion and Ebrahim Hussein’s Kinjeketile .” Matatu: Journal for African Culture and Society, vol. 56, no. 2, 2025, pp. 364–389.
“ The Poetics of Second Liberation: Revisiting Aimé Césaire’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.
Creative Works (Published)
Echoes of Green: A Play, Spotlight Publishers (EA) Limited, 2025.
A Shadow in the Sun: A Play, premiered at the University of Nairobi in August 2019 (Pearls Publishers Limited, 2019).
Creative Works (In Production)
Masks for the Soul: A Play (forthcoming).
