The International Comparative Literature Association Recognizes Jeannette Oholi's Book with an Award

Jeannette is one of only two 2024-5 prize recipients among the first-time authors of all books in Comparative Literature across languages. The prize is a great honor and a recognition of her talent and accomplishments. It is also an important logistical contribution to publishing new research, since Dartmouth does not offer book subventions to postdoctoral fellows. 

In its commendation, the Association writes that "Dr Oholi's book as a whole not only maps a transnational Black European literature, but uses this mapping to demonstrate how the dominant narrative of a 'Europeanness' rooted in Whiteness is – and has always been – a chimera. It approaches this de-centring, de-territorialisation, and decolonisation of Europeanness through the methodological lens of queering – here read and deployed as an act of radical subversion of these dominant narratives. It queers white European hegemony by placing central the cultural production of  Black authors from Germany, France and England; it considers these works as aesthetic products (not political tracts) which in their aesthetic innovation map queer futures – a future of 'radical multiplicity' rooted in Afropean aesthetics; and it makes the case for new forms of Comparative Cultural Studies: a disciplinary innovation equally rooted in this radical multiplicity."

Many heartfelt congratulations to Jeannette on this achievement!