Dr. Mathias Iroro Orhero

Mathias Iroro Orhero is primarily interested in postcolonial, Black, and African literatures and cultures, with a special focus on Nigeria's Niger Delta and the Black diaspora in North America. He researches minority subjectivities and how they respond to the nation-state through literary and cultural production. He is also interested in African history, philosophy, and folklore. His work has appeared or will soon appear (accepted) in journals like Canadian Journal of African Studies, Safundi, Nordic Journal of African Studies, Matatu, Acadiensis, Imbizo, Postcolonial Text, Ariel, Journal of Comparative Literature and Culture, and Tydskrif vir Letterkunde, in book series like African Literature Today, and books like Literature and Arts of the Niger Delta, African Battle Traditions of Insult: Verbal Arts, Song-Poetry, and Performance, and The Routledge Handbook of the New African Diasporic Literature. He is the co-editor of a forthcoming special section of the Nordic Journal of African Studies. Before joining LSU, he had taught at McGill University, Concordia University, Delta State University, and the University of Uyo.

Education:

2024: PhD (English), McGill University, Montreal, Canada

2018: M.A. (English), University of Uyo, Nigeria

2014: B.A. (English), Delta State University, Nigeria

Awards, Honours, and Fellowships

Fonds de Recherche du Quebec – Societe et Culture, Doctoral Research Scholarship, 2023-2025

Glorianna Martineau Fellowship, McGill University, 2023.

Charles R. Bronfman and Alex K. Paterson Top-Up Awards, McGill University, 2022-2024.

Graduate Excellence Fellowship, McGill University, 2020-2023

Overall Best Graduating Student Certificate (Departmental), Delta State University. May 2014.

Memberships

African Literature Association

American Comparative Literature Association

International Society for the Oral Literatures of Africa

Selected Publications

"The Development of Monica Popescu’s Research." Safundi (2024): 1-7. https://doi.org/10.1080/17533171.2024.2405081

"Negotiating Home in New African Diasporic Writings: The Niger Delta and Black Canadian Geographies in the Poetry of Nduka Otiono and Amatoritsero Ede." The Routledge Handbook of the New African Diasporic Literature, edited by Tanure Ojaide and Lokangaka Losambe. Routledge. 2024, 291-303.

""Stubborn Beauty": Africadian Women and Black Consciousness in George Elliott Clarke's Where Beauty Survived." Acadiensis: Journal of the History of the Atlantic Region/Revue d'histoire de la region atlantique 52.2 (2023): 96-106. https://doi.org/10.1353/aca.2023.a925081

“Violence-as-Norm in the Postcolony: Reading Statist Violence and Civic Dissent in Nigerian Literature” (co-authored with Chikezirim Nwoke). Matatu: Journal for African Culture and Society, vol. 54, no. 2, 2023, pp. 341-361. https://doi.org/10.1163/18757421-05402009

“Niger Delta Subaltern Agency and Resistance in Obari Gomba’s The Ascent Stone and Stephen Kekeghe’s Rumbling Sky.” Imbizo, vol. 14, no. 1, 2023, p. 18 pages. https://doi.org/10.25159/2663-6565/12532

“Epistemic Recuperation and Contemporary Reconfiguration of the Verbal Battle Tradition in the Poetry of Tanure Ojaide and Kofi Anyidoho.” African Battle Traditions of Insult: Verbal Arts, Song-Poetry, and Performance, edited by Tanure Ojaide. Palgrave Macmillan, 2023, pp. 263-280. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15617-5_14

“Child Narrators, Conceptions of Reality, and Minority Identity in Ben Okri’s The Famished Road and Eden Robinson’s Monkey Beach.” Postcolonial Text, vol. 17, no. 4, 2022. https://www.postcolonial.org/index.php/pct/article/view/2784

“Little Magazines and the Development of Modern African Poetry.” African Literature Today, vol. 35, edited by Ernest Emenyonu. Boydell & Brewer, 2017, pp. 161-190. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781787442351.013

"Urhobo Folklore and Udje Aesthetics in Tanure Ojaide's In the House of Words and Songs of Myself." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, vol. 2, 2017. https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.3014

“Artistic Commitment and Minority Resistance: Monica Popescu’s At Penpoint and Niger Delta Poetry.” Global South Studies: A Collective Publication with The Global South. https://www.globalsouthstudies.org/conversation-essay/artistic-commitment-and-minority-resistance-monica-popescus-at-penpoint-and-niger-delta-poetry/

Link to More Publications