Famed Nobel Laureate
Wole Soyinka to Discuss History
in Remedial Spin at UC San Diego Feb. 26

February 12, 2009

By Pat JaCoby

Wole Soyinka, lifelong human rights activist and the first African awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature, will discuss History in Remedial Spin during a 7:30 p.m. meeting Feb.26 in the Price Center Ballroom West at the University of California, San Diego.

Wole Soyinka, lifelong human rights activist, educator, award winning playwright, poet, and author.

The lecture, free and open to the public, is presented by Thurgood Marshall College and the Helen Edison Lecture Series. A public reception will precede the event.

Soyinka, born July 13, 1934, is a writer, poet and author who is generally considered Africa’s most distinguished playwright. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature for his work as one “who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence.”

He has been an outspoken critic of many Nigerian administrations, and of political tyranny, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. A great deal of his writing has been concerned with “the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the color of the foot that wears it.” During the Abacha dictatorship he left the country and has been living in the U.S.  He currently serves in the English department of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Allan Havis, Thurgood Marshall College provost, said that “Wole Soyinka’s keynote address is the 2009 capstone to last autumn’s dynamic, week-long Human Rights & Global Citizenship symposium. His talk is also well timed, since two major productions of his legendary play, Death and the King’s Horseman, are in performance now at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and opening this April in London at the Royal National Theatre.

A panel of UC San Diego faculty will participate in a human rights discussion specific to the continent of Africa directly following the keynote address. Ivan Evans, associate professor of sociology, will serve as moderator, while panelists will include Bennetta Jules-Rosette, professor of sociology, and Robert Cancel, associate professor of African and Comparative Literature.

 Sponsors include Eleanor Roosevelt College, African-American Studies minor, dean of Art and Humanities, African and African American Studies Research Project, Department of Theatre and Dance and Third World Studies.

Media Contact: Pat JaCoby, 858 534-7404