Gloria Chuku, associate professor of Africana Studies and affiliate associate professor of both Gender and Women’s Studies and Language, Literacy and Culture, is editor of the new volume The Igbo Intellectual Tradition: Creative Conflict in African and African Diasporic Thought. Chuku’s publisher, MacMillan, shares:
In this groundbreaking collection, leading historians, Africanists, and other scholars document the life and work of eleven Igbo intellectuals who, educated within European traditions, came to terms with the dominance of European thought while making significant contributions to African intellectual history. Mediated through a variety of interpersonal relationships, debates, and changing ideas over the course of three centuries, the figures covered here – including Oluadah Equiano, Chinua Achebe, Nnamdi Azikewe, Mbonu Ojike, Kenneth Dike, and many others – struggled to balance the defense of Africa against Western imperial discourse with the development of an authentic African intellectual heritage, even as their identities were shaped by both forces.
Simon Ottenberg (University of Washington) writes of the volume, “This is a very useful pulling together of major historical figures in Igbo discourse, allowing for contrasts and comparisons of their lives, and showing that the Igbo contribution to African development has been considerable.”
Chuku is the author of Igbo Women and Economic Transformation in Southeastern Nigeria, 1900-1960, in addition to over 30 scholarly articles. Her research has focused primarily on Igbo history and culture, gender studies, and women and the political economies of Nigeria and Africa more broadly.
