In Memoriam

Tejumola Olaniyan was an internationally-recognized scholar of African, African American, and Caribbean literatures, post-colonial studies, genre studies and popular culture studies, whose distinguished body of work serves as a foundation for other scholars around the world in African and Diasporic studies. Olaniyan’s academic homes at UW–Madison included the departments of English and African Cultural Studies.

In his 18 years at UW–Madison, Olaniyan served as department chair of African Cultural Studies, as well as a Senior Fellow and Interim Director at the Institute for Research in the Humanities. In recognition of his distinguished career of research, inspired teaching, and innovative program building, in 2019 he was awarded a WARF professorship, one of the highest honors UW–Madison has to bestow. He served as the president of the African Literature Association from 2013 to 2014, editor-in-chief of the Journal of the African Literature Association, and member of the African Studies Association’s Board of Directors from 2012 to 2015, including as program co-chair of the 2012 ASA Annual Meeting.

Olaniyan was the author and editor of many books. His latest project, one he worked on for many years, was published in 2018. ‘Taking African Cartoons Seriously: Politics, Satire, and Culture” examines the rich diversity of cartooning across Africa and highlights issues facing its cartoonists today, such as sociopolitical trends, censorship, and use of new technologies.

He served as the editor of “Enchantings,” a collection of writings examining how the state has influenced culture and cultural production in Africa, and was the co-editor of “Audible Empire: Music, Global Politics, Critique,” which shows how musical practice has been central to the spread of empire around the globe. Professor Olaniyan was lead editor on “The African Diaspora and the Disciplines,” a collection of essays reflecting on the challenges of diaspora scholarship. His monograph “Arrest the Music! Fela and His Rebel Art and Politics” is widely recognized as a masterful interdisciplinary study of modern African popular music.

Dr. Scheub was a leading scholar in African oral traditions and folklore as well as an unforgettable orator who used his unique gifts to bring the culture and stories of Africa to life for generations of UW students. Dr. Scheub, who taught at UW-Madison for 43 years as former Evjue-Bascom Professor of Humanities in the Department of African Languages and Literature (now the Department of African Cultural Studies), published more than two dozen books and more than 70 articles.

Scheub served as a jet mechanic during the Korean War and first fell in love with Africa after spending two years teaching in Uganda in the years leading up to that country’s independence. As part of his graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin, he returned to South Africa, where he spent four years walking 1,500 miles up and down the country’s eastern coast, toting the fifty pounds worth of recording and video equipment he used to record the poetry, tales and myths of the Xhosa, Zulu, Ndebele, Swati and Sotho peoples in South Africa. To record oral traditions, Scheub walked more than 6000 miles through South Africa, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, and Lesotho. Those stories would form the basis of Scheub’s signature African Storyteller course, a class he first began teaching in the 1970s.  More than 18,000 students experienced it over the course of his career.

Scheub served as department chair three times during his career, and won several teaching, research and service awards. In 2011, he founded the Professor Harold Scheub Great People Scholarship Fund to support UW- Madison students with financial needs. During the 2000s, he served as the opening speaker for UW-Madison’s summer SOAR sessions, welcoming new students to campus.

Scheub was known for his distinctive and memorable teaching style. He routinely held forth to rooms of more than 500 students, but he also demanded promptness and rapt attention from them—those who arrived late to his classes were forced to listen through the locked door.