Jonathan Haynes: Pioneering Nollywood Studies

2019 LSA DISTINGUISHED SCHOLAR AWARD: JONATHAN HAYNES (PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH AND FILM STUDIES, LONG ISLAND UNIVERSITY, USA)

Nomination Submitted by Paul Ugor, Associate Professor, Illinois State University, USA

It is indeed my pleasure and honor to nominate Professor Jonathan Haynes of Long Island University, New York as the LSA Distinguished Scholar for 2019. I have known Prof Haynes for eighteen years and I know of no other Africanist scholar who is deserving of this prestigious award than him. Not only has Prof Haynes been a consummate scholar of African literatures and cultures for the past twenty years, in those two decades, he has been an incredibly gracious and generous mentor, ally, advocate, and guardian to many Africanist scholars in the humanities.

Prof. Haynes’ research work in African literature and cinema marks him out as a scholar of towering international reputation whose persistence of scholarly inquiry into African modes of self-expression has secured legitimation for a field of study now known globally as Nollywood studies. To get a sense of Haynes’s scholarly achievements, it is important to remember that only a few years ago, Nollywood was a film industry scoffed at by mainstream cinema directors and elite scholars in the humanities. With his longtime friend and research associate, Prof. Onoookome Okome, Prof Haynes worked tirelessly to make sense of the artistic worth of Nigerian video films and to defend the legitimacy of the industry as a remarkable mode of African self-expression worthy of critical attention. Today, Nollywood it is at the centre of scholarly inquiries in prestigious scholarly fields such as Media Studies, Popular Culture, Film Studies, Anthropology, English and Cultural Studies, History, Linguistics, and other disciplines in the humanities.

The Global and the Transnational in Nollywood

"Nollywood, the Nigerian video film industry, has become the most visible form of cultural machine
on the African continent. It emerged before our very eyes, in our time. Beginning life is an uncharacteristic manner in Nigeria about twenty years ago, Nollywood has become a truly pan-African affairs...

"Shot on video, edited on personal computers, and copied onto cassettes and discs, Nigerian video films travel the length and breadth of the continent connection Africa, particularly Nigeria, to its diverse and far-flung diasporas elsewhere. Satellite television, the Internet, and piracy--at once Nollywood's boon and bane--facilitate the spread of its films across linguistic, cultural, and national boundaries.

"At the level of the individual spectator, Nollywood stirs the imagination, provoking its viewers to compare their own daily lives with what is presented on-screen as they explore the similarities and differences between the pro-filmic and the filmic world. The continent-wide influence of Nollywood, however, does not stop at this level.

"In Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, and South Africa, for example, Nollywood has served as a model of film production and inspired the growth of local film industries, which in the case of Tanzania have already begun capturing a regional market. In these countries and elsewhere, Nigerian video films are appropriated and reworked into local forms of filmmaking and other cultural models of narrativization with local inflections that borrow and copy heavily from Nollywood."

Matthias Krings & Onookome Okome, Global Nollywood: 

The Transnational Dimensions of an African Video Film Industry

KWASU Plans Center for Nollywood Studies

The Vice-Chancellor, Kwara State University (KWASU), Prof. AbdulRasheed Na’ Allah, has inaugurated a committee to see to the establishment of the Centre for Nollywood Studies at the university.

Prof. Na’ Allah stated this in his opening address recently at the Conference on African Cinema, organized by the university, with the theme: “African Cinema and the Supernatural”.

He said when operational, the centre would be charged with the responsibility of highlighting the role and effects of Nollywood films in the society.

Mr. Na’ Allah added that the planned conference was part of the university’s ambition to build bridges between scholars and those who promote culture outside the university.

He added that the goal was to reach deeply into the soul of the immediate university community and tap into the rich human and material resources of the nation.

The vice-chancellor said the essence of the centre would be to redefine the progress made by the nation in terms of arts and culture for the benefit of all.

“In 2010, the theme of the KWASU Conference on African Cinema was Nollywood: A Natural Cinema”; this year, it is Nollywood and the Supernatural.

He said the themes of both conferences showed the commitment of the institution to the promotion of culture through cinema.