Qualifications
BA (Calabar), MA (Ibadan), D.Phil (Alberta)
Biography
Paul Ugor earned his doctorate in 2009 from the Department of English and Film Studies, University of Alberta, Canada. His scholarly interests are in Postcolonial Anglophone World Literature, African literature and Cinema/video, Youth Culture Studies, Globalization and New Media, and Postcolonial theory.
Research
Jointly funded by the British Academy (UK) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Canada, my postdoctoral research here at CWAS involves an ethnographic reading of the varied cultural formations which young people in three cities in Nigeria have developed as a response to difficult social, economic and political conditions in their everyday lives. Although Africa itself is demographically a very youthful continent, discussions of the varied experiences and activities of its young population are still relatively marginal in the vibrant scholarship about the continent. My research is aimed at this discursive gap. Through this project I hope to explore how young people’s daily lives in Nigeria have become central to both local and global processes of change and the quest for social justice.
Publications
Edited Journal Issue
-
Poyntz, Stuart, Paul Ugor and Jacqueline Kennelly, (Eds.). Youth, Cultural Politics and New Social Spaces in an Era of Globalization. Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies. 31:4, (September 2009).
Refereed Journal Articles and Book Chapters
-
"Nollywood and Postcolonial Predicaments: Transnationalism, Gender and the Commoditization of Desire in Nigerian Video Films." Nollywood and Beyond, Ed. Matthias Krings and Onookome Okome, Indiana University Press (2012, forthcoming).
-
"Global Uncertainties, Youth and Cultural Renaissance in Sub-Saharan Africa". Forum21: European Journal on Child and Youth Research No. 7 (June) 2011. 126-130.
-
“Failed States, the Privatization of Sovereignty, and the Militarization of Youth in Nigeria: Contested Citizenship in Nollywood Films.” Delimiting Citizenship: Aboriginal and Diasporic Literary Perspectives. Eds. Nancy Van Styvendale and Aloys Fleischmann.
Nancy Van Styvendale and Aloys Fleischmann. University of Alberta Press (2011).
-
“Contemporary Hollywood, the African Other, and the Persistence of the Empire: Nostalgia and Post-imperial Voyeurism in Hallmark’s King Solomon’s Mines.” Colonization or Globalization? Postcolonial Exploration of Imperial Expansion. Ed.
Sylvia Nagy-Zekmi and Chantal Zabus. Lexington Books, 2010. Pp. 13-24.
-
“Small Media, Popular Culture, and New Youth Spaces in Nigeria.” Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies. 31:4 (September-October 2009). Pp. 387-408.
-
[with Kennelly, Jacqueline and Stuart Poyntz]. “Introduction: Youth, Cultural Politics, and New Social Spaces in an Era of Globalization.” Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies. 31:4 (September-October 2009). Pp. 255-269.
-
“Censorship and the Content of Nigerian Video Films.” Postcolonial Text. 3:1, 2007.
-
“Naming Suffering: Lincoln Clarkes, Photography, and the Women of Downtown Eastside Vancouver.” West coastline, 3:2, 2007. Pp. 104-109.
-
“Demonizing the African Other, Humanizing the Self: Hollywood and the Politics of Post- Imperial Adaptations.” Atenea: A Bilingual Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences. Vol. XXV1- 2, December 2006. Pp. 131-150.
-
“Reparation, Reconciliation and Negritudist Poetics in Soyinka’s Burden of Memory and the Muse of Forgiveness.” Ogun’s Children: The Literature and Politics of Wole Soyinka Since the Nobel. Ed. Onookome Okome. New Jersey: African World Press, 2005. Pp. 267-276.
-
“Developing Underdevelopment’: Democracy, New Political Elites, and the Emergence of Mountain Tourism in Nigeria.” NEBULA Quarterly. 2:4. Australia, Dec/Jan., 2005.
-
“In Furtherance of the Canadian Canon: The Image of Africa in the Narratives of Margaret Lawrence.” The African Literary Journal. USA/Nigeria: International Research Confederacy On African Literature and Culture, 2005.
-
“Culture, Film, and the Nigerian Video Producers: Some Production Implications.” International Journal of the Humanities. 3:1, 2004..
-
“African Video Films and the Yoruba Continuities in Diaspora.” Theatre Studies Review. 2:1, 2002.
-
“Evolving True Popular Indigenous Igbo Video Film in the 21st Century: Some Preliminary Insight.” Ndonode; Calabar Journal of the Humanities. 3:1, 2000.