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Jonathan Haynes
Academic Specialties & Research Interests
My research career falls into two parts, the first dedicated
to the English Renaissance and the second primarily to African
film and video production. These are extremely different objects
of knowledge, but some themes run through my interest in both
of them. One of the most important is curiosity about cultures
that are far removed from my own in space and/or time; I'm
interested in their difference as a challenge to our assumptions
about reality and social possibility and also in their linkages
with our society through broad historical processes. Another
theme is developing strategies for interpreting narratives
in relation to the societies that produced them-I think of
myself as a kind of social historian, though in my recent
work the history I am trying to write is of the present.
For a couple of decades, beginning in my youth, I was mesmerized
by the language and the brilliance of Elizabethan and Jacobean
society. My first book was a study of a neglected minor masterpiece
of Jacobean travel writing, exploring the travel genre as
it was then conceived of, probing the conceptions of history
that a representative humanist applied to the cultures of
the Middle East as well as to Greece and Rome, and locating
its ideology in the history of the founding of the British
Empire. My book on Ben Jonson's theater had a very different
horizon, working dialectically between a close social history
of London and its theaters and the forms of Jonson's plays.
I was trying to get at the genesis of Jonson's art in the
social tensions that were immanent in the playhouses; I had
classic Marxist preoccupations with realism, class conflict,
and the transition from post-feudalism to proto-capitalism.
I had always been interested in the Third World as well,
an interest that expressed itself in a year of wandering through
south Asia before graduate school, two years of residence
in the Middle East, a passionate anti-imperialist and Third
Worldist political position, and a multitude of cultural interests.
I had also always been interested in cinema, and began teaching
a course in Third World film as well as one in literature
and colonialism. At a certain point I decided to reformulate
myself as an Africanist who worked on film, and I went to
Africa. My imagination was seized by Nigeria, home to a fifth
of all the Black people in the world and to some 250 languages
and cultures-an immense, wild, chaotic, boisterous, endlessly
surprising place, suffering badly from a smashed up economy
and a brutal military dictatorship but still full of an amazing
degree of vitality and creativity. At about the time I arrived
in Nigeria, filmmaking on celluloid became impossible because
of the collapsed economy and going out to cinemas became too
dangerous, but films began to be shot on video and sold as
videocassettes. The budgets were low, the films were often
crude, but this became a channel for an astonishing outpouring
of narrative energy. Nigeria now produces more than a thousand
such films a year, in English, Yoruba, Hausa, and other languages,
and I have stayed busy trying to keep up and figure out how
to talk about them. With a Nigerian friend I wrote a book
recounting the end of Nigerian celluloid filmmaking and the
beginning of the video boom and comparing the Nigerian situation
with that of filmmaking in francophone West Africa. I then
edited the first book on the Nigerian video phenomenon. I
am at work on another book which will also take into account
the parallel video film industry in Ghana. Themes include
the melodramatic imagination and social reality, witchcraft
and modernity, and forms of political critique in African
popular culture.
CONFERENCES AND LECTURES
Invited Speaker, Roundtable: La industria cinematográfica
en Nigeria: Nollywood. Cines del Sur Film Festival, Granada,
Spain, June 2009.
“The Nollywood Diaspora: A Nigerian Video Genre.”
Culture and Communication Departmental Graduate Colloquium
Series, Drexel University, Philadelphia, May 2009, and Nollywood
and Beyond: Transnational Dimension of the African Video Industry
Conference, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany,
May 2009.
Moderator, Roundtable: The Nollywood Debate: Government
and the Development of Africa’s Indigenous Popular Cinema.
Nollywood and Beyond: Transnational Dimension of the African
Video Industry Conference, Johannes Gutenberg University,
Mainz, Germany, May 2009.
“On Location: Settings and Soundtracks.” Nollywood:
Challenges of Production, Entertainment Value and International
Marketing Strategies, Pan-African University, Lagos, Nigeria,
July 2008.
“Ojaide’s Political Imagination: The Tale of the
Harmattan.” Tanure Ojaide: Oil and Literature in the
Niger Delta: Second International Conference, Delta State
University, Abraka, Nigeria, July 2008. Chair of panel, “Is
Oil the Problem?: Nigerian Writers, Oil and the Literary Traditions
in the Niger Delta.”
“What is to be Done? Film Studies and Nigerian and
Ghanaian Videos.” African Film: an International Conference,
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, November, 2007.
"On Location: Settings and Soundtracks." Nollywood:
Challenges of Production, Entertainment Value and International
Marketing Strategies, Pan-African University, Lagos, Nigeria,
July 2008.
"Ojaide's Political Imagination: The Tale of the Harmattan."
Tanure Ojaide: Oil and Literature in the Niger Delta: Second
International Conference, Delta State University, Abraka,
Nigeria, July 2008. Chair of panel, "Is Oil the Problem:
Nigerian Writers, Oil and the Literary Traditions in the Niger
Delta."
"What is to be Done? Film Studies and Nigerian and
Ghanaian Videos." African Film: an International Conference,
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, November, 2007.
"Digital Video and Beyond: New Technologies and Innovation
in Nollywood/African Cinema." Chair of panel. Nollywood
Foundation Convention 2006, Los Angeles, June 2006.
"Cultural Epic: A Nigerian Video Genre." African
Studies Association Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, November
2005. Chair of panel, "Film, Music, and Cartoons: Providing
and Negotiating Images of Society, Past, and Present."
"'I Was Born at the Right Time': Ojaide's Autobiography."
Ojaide International Conference, Delta State University, Abraka,
Nigeria, July 2005.
"Nollywood and Video Production Elsewhere in Africa."
Access Nollywood: Origins, Directions and Developments in
Contemporary Nigerian Cinema Convention, Los Angeles, June
2005.
"Nollywood: Video Boom in Nigeria." Roundtable.
15th Festival Cinema Africano d'Asia e America Latina. Milan,
Italy, March 2005.
"The Occult in Nigerian Video Films." Institute
of Ethnology, Free University, Berlin, Germany, November 2004.
"Witchcraft and Melodrama in Nigerian and Ghanaian
Video Films." "Politics and the Supernatural I:
Yoruba Video Films." "Politics and the Supernatural
II: Igbo Video Films." Collaborative Research Center
on Media and Cultural Communication, University of Cologne,
Germany, November 2004.
"Witchcraft and Politics in Nigerian Video Films."
Institute of African Studies, Columbia University, New York,
November 2003.
"Genre in Nigerian and Ghanaian Video Films."
African Studies Association Annual Meeting, Boston, November
2003.
"Nigerian and Ghanaian Video Films." Center for
Contemporary African Studies, University of Connecticut, Storrs,
April 2003.
"Africans Abroad: A Theme in African Film and Video."
African Studies Association Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C.,
December 2002.
"Africans Abroad: A Theme in Ghanaian Video Films."
Department of Theatre Arts, University of Calabar, Nigeria.
June 2002.
"Political Critique in Nigerian Video Films."
Modes of Seeing and the Video Film in Africa Workshop. Iwalewa-Haus,
University of Bayreuth, Germany, June 2001.
"Money Rituals in Nigerian Video Films." African
Studies Association Annual Meeting, Philadelphia PA, November
1999. Chair of panel, "Questions of Identity and Modernity
in African Cinema and Video Films."
"Mobilizing Yoruba Popular Culture: Babangida Must Go."
African Studies Association Annual Meeting, Chicago IL, October
1998. Chair and organizer of panel, "Politics of the
Cassette Revolution."
"Africa and the Globalization of Media." Center
for Racial and Cultural Diversity, Southampton College, Southampton
NY, October 1998.
"Nigerian Videos: An African Popular Art." Northeast
Louisiana University, Monroe LA, April 1998.
"Syncretism and the Popular Arts: Nigerian Video Melodramas."
African Literature Association Conference, Austin TX, March
1998.
"The Liberal Arts in Africa: The Crisis of the Nigerian
Universities." Middlebury College, Middlebury VT, March
1998.
"Contradictions of Critical Production and the African
Public Sphere." Premier Circle, Ibadan, Nigeria, September
1997.
"Devaluation and the Video Boom: Economics and Thematics."
Workshop on Devaluation and the Popular Economy 1986-1996,
Development Policy Center, Ibadan, August 1997.
Co-organizer and panelist, Workshop on Postmodernism and
Postcolonialism, Department of History, University of Ibadan,
May 1997.
"African Film and the U.S. Market." Nigerian Film
and Video Workshop, Kaduna, Nigeria, April 1997.
"Nigerian Video Films: A Critical Agenda." Nigerian
Universities Theatre Arts Students Association Symposium,
University of Ibadan, March 1997.
"Evolving Popular Media: Nigerian Home Videos."
Association of Communication and Language Arts Students guest
lecture, University of Ibadan, January 1997.
"Funding African Film." New York African Studies
Association Conference, Dobbs Ferry NY, April 1996.
"Diop Mambety's Post-colonialism." African Literature
Association Conference, Stony Brook NY, March 1996.
"African Filmmaking and the Post-colonial Predicament."
African Studies Association Annual Meeting, Orlando FL, November
1995. Chair of session, "African Filmmaking and the Post-colonial
Predicament." Also presented at the Modern Language Association
Convention, Chicago IL, December 1995.
"Popular Nigerian Cinema." African Studies Institute,
Columbia University, New York NY, November 1995.
"Structural Adjustments of Nigerian Comedy: Baba Sala."
Conference on Media, Popular Culture, and "The Public"
in Africa, Northwestern University and the University of Chicago,
Chicago IL, April 1994.
"African and American Literatures Compared." English
Literary Association, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria,
October 1992.
"Cinema and Social Change in Africa: Political and Culturalist
Tendencies." University of Calabar International Conference
on African Literature, Calabar, Nigeria, May 1992.
"Contemporary Politics of Multiculturalism in American
Universities." American Studies Association of Nigeria
Conference, Port Harcourt, Nigeria, February 1992.
"The Salman Rushdie Affair." Panelist, Bennington
College, Bennington VT, April 1989.
"Bob Marley and the Politics of Culture." Sunday
Seminar Series, Bennington College, November 1988.
"Representing the Underworld." Modern Language
Association Convention, December 1986.
Panelist, moderator, and co-organizer. Jim Jarmusch Film
Festival, Bennington College, Bennington VT, November 1986.
"Party-going on and off the Elizabethan Stage."
Peking University, Beijing, China, May 1985.
"The Elizabethan Audience on Stage." Themes in
Drama Conference, University of California-Riverside, Riverside
CA, February 1985.
"Jonson's Realism and Social Behavior." Modern
Language Association Convention, December 1983. Organizer
of Special Session: "Drama and Society in the Age of
Jonson."
Session chair and respondent, "Theories of the Novel."
Conference on Mikhail Bakhtin: His Circle, His Influence.
Queen's University, Ontario, October 1983.
"Two Seventeenth Century Views of the Middle East."
Alif Lecture Series, American University in Cairo, Cairo,
Egypt, February 1982.
PUBLICATIONS
Books
Nigerian Video Films. Ed. Jonathan Haynes. Ibadan,
Nigeria: Kraft Books for the Nigerian Film Corporation, 1997.
Revised and expanded second edition, Athens, OH: Ohio Univ.
Press, 2000.
Cinema and Social Change in West Africa. By Onookome
Okome and Jonathan Haynes. Jos, Nigeria: Nigerian Film Corporation,
1995; revised edition 1997.
The Social Relations of Jonson's Theater. New York
and Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1992.
The Humanist as Traveler: George Sandys's "Relation
of a Journey begun An. Dom. 1610". Rutherford, NJ:
Fairleigh Dickinson Univ. Press and London: Associated Univ.
Presses, 1986.
Articles
"Nigerian Videos, at Home and Abroad." 2008. Global
Civil Society 2007/8: Communicative Power and Democracy.
Eds. Martin Albrow et al. London and Los Angeles: Sage. 204-207.
"Nollywood." International Encyclopedia of Communication.
Ed. Wolfgang Donsbach. Oxford and Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell,
2008. Vol. 7: 3322-3324.
"Media: Cinema." New Encyclopedia of Africa.
Second Edition. Eds. John Middleton and Joseph C. Miller.
Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2008. Vol. 3: 516-518.
"Nollywood in Lagos, Lagos in Nollywood Films."
Africa Today 54.2 (2007): 130-150. Trans. as "Nollywood
en Lagos, Lagos en las peliculas de Nollywood." Archivos
de la Filmoteca 62 (June 2009): 72-97.
"Nnebue: The Anatomy of Power." Film International
28 (5.4) (2007): 30-40.
"Video Boom: Nigeria and Ghana." Postcolonial
Text 3.2 (2007). Postcolonial.org. <http://journals.sfu.ca/pocol/index.php/pct/article/view/522/422>
1-10. Link
"TK in NYC: An Interview with Tunde Kelani." Postcolonial
Text 3.2 (2007). Postcolonial org. <http://journals.sfu.ca/pocol/index.php.pct/article/view/659/409>
1-16. Link
"Political Critique in Nigerian Video Films." African
Affairs 105/421 (2006): 511-533.
"'I Was Born at the Right Time': Ojaide's Autobiography."
The Guardian (Lagos) August 26, 2005. Rpt. Tanure
Ojaide: Living in the Niger Delta. Ed. Onookome Okome.
Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press and Ibadan, Nigeria: Kraft
Books. (forthcoming)
"Nollywood: What's in a Name?" The Guardian
(Lagos) July 3, 2005: 56, 58. Rpt. ITPAN News 2.6 (2005):
11-12.
"Il Boom del video: La Nigeria e il Ghana trasformano
la cinematografia Africana/ Le Boom de la video: Le Nigeria
et le Ghana transforment la cinematographie africaine/ Video
Boom: Nigerian and Ghana transform African film." 15th
Festival Cinema Africano d'Asia e America Latina. Ed.
Alessandra Speciale. Milan: Editrice Il Castoro, 2005. 176-93.
"Africans Abroad: A Theme in Film and Video." Africa
& Mediterraneo 45 (March 2003).
"Mobilizing Yoruba Popular Culture: Babangida Must Go."
Africa 73.1 (March 2003): 122-38.
"Le boum de la vidéo au Nigéria."
CinémAction 106 (1er trimester, 2003). Cinémas
d'Afrique noire en transit (1980-2000). Special number
ed. Samuel Lelievre. 165-72.
"Devaluation and the Video Boom: Economics and Thematics."
Money Struggles and City Life: Devaluation in Ibadan and
Other Urban Centers in Southern Nigeria, 1986-1996. Eds.
Jane I. Guyer, LaRay Denzer, and Adigun Agbaje. Portsmouth,
NH: Heinemann, 2002. 207-17.
"African Filmmaking and the Postcolonial Predicament:
Quartier Mozart and Aristotle's Plot." African Cinema:
Postcolonial and Feminist Readings. Ed. Kenneth Harrow.
Lawrenceville, NJ: Africa World Press, 1999. 23-48. Rpt. in
Cinema and Social Discourse in Cameroon. Ed. Alexie
Tcheuyap. Bayreuth, Germany: Bayreuth African Studies, 2005.
111-36.
"Evolving Popular Media: Nigerian Video Films."
By Jonathan Haynes and Onookome Okome. Research in African
Literatures 29.3 (Fall 1998): 106-28. Partial reprint
in program for Special Event on the Nigerian Video Filmmaking
Industry, Berlin Film Festival, 2004.
"Perspectives on the African City: Les Guerisseurs."
Glendora Review 2.1 (1997): 71-4.
"Returning to the African Village: Sango Malo and Ta
Dona." Jump Cut 40 (1996): 62-66.
"Nigerian Cinema: Structural Adjustments." Research
in African Literatures 26.3 (Fall 1995): 97-119 (special
issue on African cinema). Rpt. in African Cinema: Postcolonial
and Feminist Readings. Ed. Kenneth Harrow. Lawrenceville,
NJ: African World Press, 1999. 155-90.
"Structural Adjustments of Nigerian Comedy: Baba Sala."
Passages 5.1 (Fall 1994): 17-20.
"Class, Theatre, and the Inconsequential Nostalgia of
Rasheed Gbadamosi." Ase 2.1 (Harmattan 1993):
22-35.
"Contemporary Politics of Multiculturalism in American
Universities." Nigerian Journal of American Studies
III (July 1993): 64-72.
"Introduction" to Pendants: Poems by Onookome
Okome. Ibadan: Kraft Books, 1993.
"Representing the Underworld: The Alchemist." Studies
in Philology 86 (Winter 1989): 18-41.
"The Elizabethan Audience on Stage." Themes
in Drama 9. Ed. James Redmond. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1987. 59-68.
"Festivity and the Dramatic Economy of Jonson's Bartholomew
Fair." ELH 51 (Winter 1984): 645-68. Reprinted
in Modern Critical Views: Ben Jonson. Ed. Harold Bloom.
New York: Chelsea House, 1987.
"Two 17th Century Views of the Middle East." Alif:
Journal of Comparative Poetics 3 (Spring 1983): 4-22.
Reviews
Joseph K. Adjaye. Boundaries of Self and Other in Ghanaian
Popular Culture. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004. African
Studies Review (forthcoming).
Françoise Pfaff, ed. Focus on African Films.
Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 2004. Africa Today
(forthcoming).
Frances Harding, ed. The Performance Arts in Africa: A
Reader. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. African
Studies Review 47.1 (2004): 241-42.
Karin Barber, The Generation of Plays: Yorùbá
Popular Life in Theater. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press,
2000. African Studies Review 45.3 (2002): 108-09.
"African Cinema and its Criticism: Review Article":
David Murphy, Sembene: Imagining Alternatives in Film and
Fiction. Oxford and Trenton NJ: James Curry and African
World P, 2001; Symbolic Narratives/African Cinema: Audiences,
Theory and the Moving Image. Ed. June Givanni. London:
British Film Institute, 2000; Olivier Barlet, African Cinemas:
Decolonizing the Gaze. London: Zed Books, 2000. African
Affairs 101 (2002): 645-650.
Neil Lazarus, Nationalism and Cultural Practice in the
Postcolonial World. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press,
1999. Research in African Literatures 32.3 (Fall 2001):
242-43.
Ronald Knowles, ed. Shakespeare and Carnival: After Bakhtin.
London: Macmillan and New York: St. Martin's, 1998. Shakespeare
Quarterly (Winter 2000): 495-96.
Femi Ojo-Ade, Ken Saro-Wiwa: a bio-critical study.
New York and Lagos: Africana Legacy Press, 1999. Craig W.
McLuckie and Aubrey McPhail, eds. Ken Saro-Wiwa: Writer
and Political Activist. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2000.
African Studies Review 43.2 (September 2000): 170-73.
Olivier Barlet, Les Cinémas d'Afrique noire: le
regard en question. Paris: L'Harmattan, 1996. Research
in African Literatures 31.4 (Winter 2000): 177-78.
"The Pan-African Film Festival." Post Express,
March 26, 1997: 27.
"FESPACO '93." The Guardian (Lagos), March
13, 1993: 18.
Rebecca W. Bushnell, Tragedies of Tyrants: Political Thought
and Theater in the English Renaissance. Ithaca: Cornell
Univ. Press, 1990. CHOICE, March 1991.
Richard C. McCoy, The Rites of Knighthood: The Literature
and Politics of Elizabethan Chivalry. Berkeley: Univ.
of California Press, 1989. CHOICE, June 1990.
John D. Cox, Shakespeare and the Dramaturgy of Power.
Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1989. CHOICE, October
1989.
Leah S. Marcus, Puzzling Shakespeare: Local Reading and
Its Discontents. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press,
1989. CHOICE, June 1989.
Ralph Berry, Shakespeare and Social Class. Atlantic
Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1988. CHOICE, March
1989.
Kevin Sharpe, Criticism and Compliment: The Politics of
Literature in the England of Charles I. Cambridge: Cambridge
Univ. Press, 1987. CHOICE, September 1988.
Anthony Gerard Barthelemy, Black Face, Maligned Race:
The Representation of Blacks in English Drama from Shakespeare
to Southerne. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press,
1987. CHOICE, February 1988.
Rosalind Miles, Ben Jonson: His Life and Work. London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986. CHOICE, September 1987
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