Simon Gikandi
James Ogude
Ndirangu Wachanga
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Wanjiku wa Ngũgĩ
Mumbi wa Ngũgĩ
Ndũcũ wa Ngũgĩ
Nyambura Sallinen
Wangũi wa Goro
Karen Lawrence
Colette LaBouff
Angela Davis
Adriana Johnson
Mukul Kumar
Carla Wilson
Paa Kwesi-Heto
Akosua Adomako Ampofo
Chimee Adịọha
Baba Badji
Jaye Austin Williams
Cilas Kemedjio
Anindo Marshall
Kwame Rĩgĩĩ
Nii Armah Sowah
Sela Adjei
Victor Nani Agbeli
Mumbi Ngũgĩ
Fred Moten
Jimmy Centeno
Idza Luhumyo
Bwesigye Bwa-Mwesigire
Rah Hite
Tyrus Miller
Jane O. Newman
Jerry Lee
Ketu Katrak
Gabriele Schwab
David Theo Goldberg
Rajagopalan Radhakrishnan
Cecelia Lynch
S. Ama Wray
Munyao Kilolo
Glaydah Namukasa
Joel Veenstra










Simon Gikandi





Simon Gikandi is the Class of 1943 University Professor of English and Chair of the English Department at Princeton University. He is a scholar of the literatures and cultures of Africa and its diasporas in Europe and the Americas. He was editor of PMLA, the official journal of the Modern Language Association from 2011 to 2016 and was President of the MLA in 2019-2020. His many books and articles include Writing in Limbo: Modernism and Caribbean Literature; Maps of Englishness: Writing Identity in the Culture of Colonialism; and Ngugi wa Thiong’o, a Choice Outstanding Academic Publication for 2004. His book Slavery and the Culture of Tastewas winner of both the MLA’s James Russell Lowell Award and of the African Studies Association Melville J. Herskovits Award. He is the editor of the Routledge Encyclopedia of African Literature, coeditor of The Cambridge History of African and Caribbean Literature, and editor of The Novel in Africa and the Caribbean since 1950, volume 11 of the Oxford History of the Novel in English. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a corresponding member of the British Academy.







The Celebration of the Life and Work of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o is made possible through the support of the:

UCI Office of the Chancellor
Dean of the School of the Arts
Dean of the School of Humanities
Dean of the School of Social Sciences
Humanities Center
International Center for Writing and Translation
UCI Interdisciplinary Center for the Scientific Study of Ethics and Morality
Center for Global Peace and Conflict Studies
Office of Inclusive Excellence
UCI Illuminations: The Chancellor's Arts & Culture Initiative
Alex Glasser The Center for the Power of Music and Social Change
Department of Anthropology
Department of Comparative Literature
Department of Drama
Department of English
Department of Dance

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Organized by:

Adriana Johnson
Jane O. Newman
Gabriele Schwab
Ketu Katrak
Jerry Lee
Cecelia Lynch
S. Ama Wray