Lecture by Dr. Akin Ogundiran, Northwestern University

Thursday, April 10 at 5:30pm
Integrated Learning Center S211
For Zoom attendance, register here: https://tinyurl.com/wmsaia2025akin

Between ca. 1650 and 1800, the Ọyọ Empire was the largest political formation in West Africa, south of the River Niger. Over the past twenty years, Akin Ogundiran has conducted archaeological research in the capital, colonies, and provinces of the empire to understand the strategies of Ọyọ expansion and the everyday lives of different segments of its population. In this talk, Ogundiran juxtaposes the materialities of military conquest, colonization strategies, and household politics to tell an intimate story of one of the most important imperial formations in Africa during the Early Modern Period. Here, the regional and multi-sited scope and the residential contexts of the archaeological research allow for a fine-scale understanding of how domesticity, gender, class, labor, technology, mobility, and the landscape were manipulated to fashion the Ọyọ Empire. In the process, ideas about personhood, family, and sexuality were also transformed. The archaeology of the Ọyọ Empire contributes to a truly global understanding of the Early Modern Period.

About the Speaker
Akin Ogundiran is the Cardiss Collins Professor of Arts and Sciences, Professor of History, and Courtesy Professor of Anthropology and of Black Studies at Northwestern University. He is the current President of the Society of Africanist Archaeologists. His research interests include the topics of empire and community formation in West Africa and the African Diaspora over the past 2,500 years, with emphasis on the archaeology and cultural history of the Yoruba World. Professor Ogundiran’s publications include The Yoruba: A New History (Indiana University Press, 2020), recipient of the 2022 Vinson Sutlive Book Prize and the 2022 Isaac Oluwole Delano Prize for Yoruba Studies. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and a Member of the Nigerian Academy of Letters.

This year's AIA National Martha Sharp Joukowsky Lecture is co-sponsored by the AIA–Western Massachusetts Society, UMass Amherst Department of Classics, UMass Amherst Department of Anthropology, and W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies