Genova, Ann

PERSONAL:

Education: University of Texas at Austin, Ph.D., 2007.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Roanoke College, 9 North College 210, 221 College Ln., Salem, VA 24153. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, editor, and educator. Roanoke College, Salem, VA, assistant professor of history.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with Toyin Falola) Yoruba Creativity: Fiction, Language, Life, and Songs, Africa World Press (Trenton, NJ), 2004.

(Editor, with Toyin Falola) Orisa: Yoruba Gods and Spiritual Identity in Africa and the Diaspora, Africa World Press (Trenton NJ), 2005.

(With Toyin Falola) The Politics of the Global Oil Industry: An Introduction, Praeger (Westport, CT), 2005.

(Editor, with Toyin Falola) Yoruba Identity and Power Politics, University of Rochester Press (Rochester, NY), 2006.

(Editor, with Toyin Falola) The Yoruba in Transition: History, Values, and Modernity, Carolina Academic Press (Durham, NC), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Ann Genova is a writer, historian, and educator based at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia, where she serves as an assistant professor of history. As an academic, Genova specializes in African history, with a further interest in petroleum and oil industry issues in Nigeria. She teaches a variety of courses on Africa and African history, covering subjects such as nationalism in Africa, the African diaspora, the culture and history of Nigeria and South Africa, and both modern and ancient African history.

Genova's interest in the worldwide oil and petroleum market has formed the basis of substantial segments of her professional writing. She is the author, with Toyin Falola, of The Politics of the Global Oil Industry: An Introduction. In this book, the authors "survey the global politics of oil" in areas around the world, reported a Reference & Research Book News contributor. The first part of the book covers the history of the oil industry, and contains information on the small and large companies that found, extracted, marketed, and distributed petroleum products throughout the world. Genova and Falola carefully consider the growth of the oil industry and the vast amounts of money and power that propelled it. They consider the international role of oil companies, oil cartels, oil-producing nations, and other major players. They look at how oil production has impacted global politics, the environment, economic development, and human rights in areas around the world. They also present specific case studies from countries such as Mexico, Iraq, Norway, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Nigeria. The book is "accessible to students and lay readers. Another strength is the authors' demonstrable familiarity with and insight into the political impact of oil in various countries," commented James B. McSwain, writing in History: Review of New Books. Evan Hillebrand, in a Political Science Quarterly review, called the book an "interesting introduction to a very large topic." McSwain concluded that The Politics of the Global Oil Industry is "best used as a ready reference work for readers not conversant with the conventional highlights of global oil politics."

Genova is also a specialist in the culture, history, and society of the Yoruba, a African ethnic group in Nigeria with a rich background, language, and mythology. Four of Genova's books, three of which were edited in collaboration with Falola, focus on the Yoruba. Yoruba Creativity: Fiction, Language, Life, and Songs, edited with Falola, contains essays examining the sophisticated literary, artistic, and linguistic culture of the Yoruba. The authors explore important elements of Yoruba dance, music, writing, and the expressive and evolving language that gives it all a perpetual life as Yoruba traditions are recorded and passed on. Orisa: Yoruba Gods and Spiritual Identity in Africa and the Diaspora examines the wide expansion of Yoruba religion and culture beyond the borders of Nigeria, fueled by the diaspora that has found Yoruba people in diverse and geographically widespread areas throughout the world. Orisa worship, an important component of Yoruba religion, has remained intact even though the practitioners of the religion have moved far from their original Nigerian homeland. Falola, Genova, and the book's contributors explore the spread of Orisa worship and Yoruba religion throughout the world, look at how Orisa-based communities have been established in the United States, and analyze the importance of this religion in preserving and propagating Yoruba cultural and religious identity. Yoruba Identity and Power Politics, also edited by Genova and Falola, presents a collection of essays on Yoruba history and politics, from precolonial times to the present, with an emphasis on how that background has influenced the complexity of contemporary Yoruba politics.

Genova again collaborated with Falola to edit The Yoruba in Transition: History, Values, and Modernity, a volume which had its origins in a scholarly conference from March, 2004, noted a Reference & Research Book News contributor. Olatunji Ojo, writing in Africa Today, called the book a "good addition to the numerous publications that make the Yoruba attractive to scholars." The work "seeks a multidisciplinary study of the Yoruba of Nigeria and their engagement and negotiations (‘transition’) with ‘modernity,’ ‘internationalism,’ and globalization," Ojo noted. "In particular," Ojo continued, "it is concerned with the relationship between the Yoruba elite, politics, and mass mobilization and the deployment of identity consciousness." The book is divided into three parts, and begins with an exploration of the origins of commonly held Yoruba identity, in which a Western-educated Christian elite helped bring together the multicultural Yoruba under a common ethnic identity. In the second and third sections of the book, the contributors cover a variety of topics representing the cultural and political transition faced by the Yoruba. They discuss topics such as health care, literacy, education, economics, crime and law enforcement, agriculture, social stratification, the role of Yoruba women, transportation, cybercrime, and more. In total, the essays in the book demonstrate "how the Yoruba are negotiating the path of modernity," Ojo remarked.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Africa Today, winter, 2007, Olatunji Ojo, review of The Yoruba in Transition: History, Values, and Modernity, p. 151.

American Historical Review, October, 2007, Lisa A. Lindsay, review of Yoruba Identity and Power Politics, p. 1287.

Choice, November, 2006, M.E. Doro, review of Yoruba Identity and Power Politics, p. 539.

History: Review of New Books, winter, 2006, James B. McSwain, review of The Politics of the Global Oil Industry: An Introduction, p. 63.

International Journal of African Historical Studies, spring, 2006, Solimar Otero, review of Orisa: Yoruba Gods and Spiritual Identity in Africa and the Diaspora, p. 351; winter, 2006, Elisha P. Renne, review of Yoruba Creativity: Fiction, Language, Life, and Songs, p. 175; winter, 2007, Elisha P. Renne, review of Yoruba Identity and Power Politics, p. 178.

Journal of Modern African Studies, September, 2007, Aderemi Suleiman Ajala, review of Yoruba Identity and Power Politics, p. 483.

Political Science Quarterly, winter, 2006, Evan Hillebrand, review of The Politics of the Global Oil Industry, p. 737.

Reference & Research Book News, February, 2006, review of The Politics of the Global Oil Industry; August, 2006, review of The Yoruba in Transition.