Maik Nwosu
Professor; Chair, English and Literary Arts
Professional Biography
Maik Nwosu is Professor of English and chair of the Department of English and Literary Arts at the University of Denver, Colorado. He worked as a journalist (and received the Nigeria Media Merit Award for Journalist of the Year) before moving to Syracuse University, New York for a Ph.D. in English and Textual Studies. His research and interest areas include Global Anglophone Literatures, Global Black Literatures, Creative Writing, Semiotics, and Critical Theory. Nwosu is a fellow of the Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany; the Civitella Ranieri Center, Umbertide, Italy; and the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study, Stellenbosch, South Africa.
Nwosu's academic essays have appeared in several journals and books, including English in Africa; Research in African Literatures; Texts, Tasks, and Theories: Versions and Subversions in African Literatures; Journal of Postcolonial Writing; Transnational Literature; Commonwealth Essays and Studies; Semiotica: Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies; Critical Insights: Cultural Encounters; and Journal of Narrative Theory. His book, Markets of Memories: Between the Postcolonial and the Transnational (Africa World Press, 2011), explores the traveling sign in the context of cultural-ideological intersections and in relation to selected works by Christopher Okigbo, Derek Walcott, James Joyce, and Isabel Allende. He has also published a coedited book, The Critical Imagination in African Literature: Essays in Honor of Michael J. C. Echeruo (Syracuse University Press, 2015) and a study of Africa’s carnivalesque poetics of laughter, The Comic Imagination in Modern African Literature and Cinema: A Poetics of Laughter (Routledge, 2016).
Nwosu’s creative works include two poetry collections, Suns of Kush and Stanzas from the Underground; four novels: Invisible Chapters, Alpha Song, A Gecko’s Farewell, and The Book of Everything; a collection of short stories, Return to Algadez; and a play, A Quintet for Dawn.
Degree(s)
- Ph.D., English and Textual Studies, Syracuse University, 2005
