Cajetan Iheka

Associate Professor of English

Cajetan Iheka is Associate Professor of English at Yale University. Professor Iheka’s research centers on the political and formal aff ordances of African cultural productions, especially literature and film. He is the author of Naturalizing Africa: Ecological Violence, Agency, and Postcolonial Resistance in African Literature, winner of the 2019 Ecocriticism Book Award from the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment. He is currently working on a book signaling the media turn in African ecocriticism with its focus on film, photography, and other visual arts. His articles have appeared in refereed venues such as Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, Environmental Ethics, Research in African Literatures, and the Oxford Handbook of Nigerian Politics. His awards and fellowships include the Best Article Award from the African Literature Association, the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship, and the Andrew Mellon Research Fellowship from the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. He received a First Class degree at the Imo State University in Nigeria, and earned his Ph.D. in English from Michigan State University. Professor Iheka joins Yale from the University of Alabama, where he was an Associate Professor.