Ayodeji Ogunnaike

Assistant Professor of Africana Studies

Professor Ogunnaike teaches interdisciplinary courses on Africa and the African Diaspora that center around the important role religion plays in these communities. His research focusses mostly on Yoruba oriṣa worship in Nigeria, but also addresses Islam in Africa, Christianity in Africa, and diaspora religions—Brazilian Candomblé in particular. Having studied Ifa divination with a high priest and diviner in Nigeria, he has a keen interest in indigenous African intellectual traditions and ways of knowing. His current book project, Forms of Worship: How Oriṣa Devotion Became Religion in Nigeria and Brazil, analyzes how the worship of traditional Yoruba deities originally differed greatly from Western notions of “religion” but eventually became the most widespread and celebrated indigenous African religion through contact with modernity and mission Christianity. He is also currently working on a children’s book of Yoruba mythology with his brothers Oludamini and Olumakinde and has been developing and curating an online library of Ifa orature.

“No Condition Is Permanent: Achebe’s Ambivalent and Nuanced Commentary on Religion in Igboland” Maine Humanities Council (2021)

“Forms of Worship, Not Religion” Five Colleges Consortium African Studies Council (2021)

“‘Living’ Religion: Egungun as Active Ancestral Agency in the World” African and Diasporic Religious Studies Association (2021)

“Spreading Sands: Khaṭṭ al-Raml and Indigenous African Divination” European Network for the Study of Islam and Esotericism (2020)

“Teaching through Traditional Yoruba Religion” American Academy of Religion (2020)

“Gender Controversies in Global Yoruba Religion” Invited Lecture, College of William and Mary (2019)

“The Separation of Tradition and State: Yoruba Sacred Kings, Governance, and Religion” American Academy of Religion (2019)

“God As Commodity: Religion in Africa and the Diaspora” African Development Conference (2019)

“Stick to the Script: The Centrality of Sacred Literary Analysis in Traditional Yoruba Society” American Comparative Literature Association (2018)

“(Re)Making African Religions” American Academy of Religion (2017)

“The Importance of Sacred Kings in the Growth of Christianity in Yorubaland” Redeemer’s University, Nigeria (2017)

“Religion, Blacksmithing, and Weaponry in Africa” Pecha Kucha Night, Boston Athenaeum (2016)

“Comprehensive Religion: Traditional Religion(s) and the Expanding and Contracting Sacred Canopy” Harvard African Studies Workshop (2015)

“Yoruba Religion at the Crossroads” with Chief Ifarinwale Ogundiran, Araba of Modakeke, Coll 300, College of William & Mary (2017)

“Managing Multiple Masculinities: Traditional Perspectives on Masculinity Drawn from Yoruba Mythology” American Academy of Religion (2015)

“A World in Words: Insights on Yoruba Cosmology and Sacred Time in an Ifa Proverb” African Languages in the Disciplines (2015)

“Divine Diagnosis: A Case Study in Traditional Yoruba Approaches to Mental Illness” American Academy of Religion (2014)

“Divining for the Environment: An Ifá Response to the Current Ecological Crisis” co-presented with Oludamini Ogunnaike at the American Academy of Religion (2014)

“Doves and Crows: An Engagement of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Teachings with Islam and Yoruba Religion” Delivered at St. Paul’s School (2013)

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Education

PhD, Harvard University
MA, Harvard University
BA, Harvard University

Department of Africana Studies

Ayodeji Ogunnaike

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Education