Subfield

African, World

Research Interests

West Africa (Yoruba, Nigeria) and the African Diaspora (Haiti, Dominican Republic, Cuba), History of Anthropology, Social Theory.

Andrew Apter works on ritual, memory, and indigenous knowledge as well as colonial culture, commodity fetishism and state spectacle. His historical ethnography of Yoruba hermeneutics informs his research on “syncretism” and creolization in West Africa and the Americas.

Selected Publications

Recent Articles:
2005 “Griaule’s Legacy: Rethinking ‘la parole claire’ in Dogon Studies,” Cahiers d'Études Africaines 177, XLV (1): 95-129.

2004 "Herskovits's Heritage: Rethinking Syncretism in the African Diaspora." In A.M Leopold and J.S. Jensen, eds. Syncretism in Religion: A Reader. New York: Routledge, 160-184. Reprinted from Diaspora 1 (3), 1991: 235-260.

2002 "On African Origins: Creolization and Connaissance in Haitian Vodou,"American Ethnologist 29 (2): 233-260.

2002 "On Imperial Spectacle: The Dialectics of Seeing in Colonial Nigeria," Comparative Studies in Society and History 44 (3): 564-96.

1999 “Africa, Empire, and Anthropology: A Philological Exploration of Anthropology's Heart of Darkness," Annual Review of Anthropology Vol. 28: 577-98.

1999 ”IBB=419: Nigerian Democracy and the Politics of Illusion," John and Jean Comaroff (eds.) Civil Society and the Political Imagination in Africa, U. of Chicago Press, 267-307.

1999 “The Subvention of Tradition: A Genealogy of the Nigerian Durbar," in G. Steinmetz (ed.) State/Culture: The Study of State Formation after the Cultural Turn. Cornell University Press, 213-252.

1998 "Death and the King's Henchmen: Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Political Ecology of Citizenship in Nigeria," in Abdul-Rasheed Na'Allah (ed.) Ogoni Agonies, Africa Press International, 121-160.

1998 "Discourse and its Disclosures: Yoruba Women and the Sanctity of Abuse," Africa. 68 (1):68-97.

Books:

	Black Critics and Kings: The Hermeneutics of Power in Yoruba Society (University of Chicago Press, 1992)
	The Pan-African Nation: Oil and the Spectacle of Culture in Nigeria (University of Chicago Press, 2005)
		Beyond Words: Discourse and Critical Agency in Africa(University of Chicago Press, 2007)