KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Professor Echeruo is the William Safire Professor of Modern Letters at Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York. Professor Echeruo studied at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, Oxford University, England and holds a PhD in English and American Literature from Cornel University. Prior to his current appointment, Professor Echeruo was the founding President of Imo State University where he served from 1981-88 and was formerly, Dean, Postgraduate School, University of Ibadan, Nigeria’s premier University from 1978-80. He has held numerous visiting professorships including: Visiting Professor, Department of English, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana1989-90; Visiting Professor, Department of English, University of California, LA, California, 1988-89; Distinguished Professor of the Humanities, University of Houston, Houston, Texas, 1980-81.
Professor Echeruo is a well known international scholar and is a Member, Executive Board, International School of Theory in the Humanities, University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain since 1996. He was formerly President, Conference of Rectors, Presidents and Vice Chancellors of Universities of West Africa, 1985-88 and has received honorary degrees including Hon. Litt. D (Imo State University, Nigeria), 2001; Hon. LL D (Abia State University, Nigeria), 1995 and Hon. D. Litt. (University of Nebraska, Lincoln), 1991. He was elected a Fellow of the National Academy of the Humanities (FNAH) in 2003.
He has published 10 books and several articles in journals and edited volumes including Victorian Lagos: Aspects of Life in Late Nineteenth-Century Lagos. London: Macmillan, 1977; Mister Johnson. By Joyce Cary. ed with intro. London: Longman, 1975; Mortality: Poems. London: Longman, 1965; The Conditioned Imagination: Studies in the Exo-cultural Stereotype from Shakespeare to Conrad. London: Macmillan; New York: Holmes and Meier, 1978; Shakespeare's The Tempest. ed. (with Introduction and Notes), New Swan Shakespeare, Advanced Series, London: Longman, 1980; An African Diaspora: The Ontological Project, in The African Diaspora: African Origins and New World Identities. Ed. Isidore Okpewho, Carole Boyce-Davis, and Ali A. Mazrui. Bloomington: Indiana UP. 3- 8