Ainehi Edoro-Glines
UW–Madison Race, Ethnicity, and Indigeneity fellow (2024–2025)
Vilas and Mellon Morgridge Assistant Professor of English, Department of English; African Cultural Studies Department (joint appointment), UW–Madison
Forest Imaginaries: How African Novels Think
In literary imagination, the forest is often fossilized. It is seen as either an inert backdrop for stories, a fantastical counterpoint to realism, the mythical origin of modernity, or a symbol for endangered nature. This lecture proposes a reimagining of the forest’s role in literature.
Based on my study of forests in indigenous African narratives and modern African fiction, I will show that the forest is far more than just a setting—it is an intelligent space that generates, organizes, and shapes fictional worlds. The forest does this by breaking apart identities, concepts, spaces, and bodies—anything that shapes life—in order to create a context of indeterminacy where these fragments can be reassembled in new ways. As an interpretive apparatus, the forest deepens our understanding of space in fiction and invites new approaches to world-building.
Ainehi Edoro-Glines is a Nigerian academic of Esan descent. She is an Assistant Professor, jointly appointed in the English and African cultural studies departments at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where she teaches and researches African literature and digital culture. She is also the founder and editor of Brittle Paper, an online platform for African writing and literary culture. Her book Forest Imaginaries: How African Novels Think is forthcoming from Columbia University Press.
*Events currently open only to 2024-25 fellows due to space concerns; please contact IRH at info@irh.wisc.edu to be added to a cancellation list for in-person events.*