Rosemary Oyinlola Popoola specializes in African and Afro-diasporic literature and cultures, specifically film, music, visual, popular, and celebrity culture, with specific attention to race, women, gender, and sexuality. She is a PhD candidate in African cultural studies with a minor in gender and women’s studies. Her dissertation, titled “The Lyric is Male, but the Voice is Female: Gender, Sexuality, and Queering African Soundscapes,” is interested in the question of erasure, silence, and hegemonic masculinities and how they impede the visibility and articulation of women and queer artists’ voices, contributions, and presence in the scholarly and social production of music in Nigeria, West Africa. Rosemary read the history of popular music against the grain, centering women, non-binary, and queer artists who have occupied the margin, reclaiming voice, agency, and resistance against heteropatriarchal, hegemonic masculinity and heteronormativity in the social production and scholarship of popular music in Nigeria, West Africa. Her work has appeared in the Journal of African Cultural Studies, the Journal of Cultural Research, the Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, Women Studies International Forum, and the Journal of Asian and African Studies, among others.
Personal website: https://www.rosemaryoyinlolapopoola.com/about