ABSTRACT
In this conversation, Cajetan Iheka discusses his book African Ecomedia and its contribution to ecomedia studies. This volume, published by Duke University Press in 2021, centers Africa as a key site for media production, consumption, and disposal. It comprises five chapters examining a rich media archive produced in African locations, from Ghana to Kenya, Senegal to South Africa, and spanning video art, photography, documentary, and fiction film. African Ecomedia combines attention to the transformative agency of visual media with a focus on the socioecological costs of media processes. Cajetan Iheka is a Professor of English at Yale University. He specializes in African literature, ecocriticism, ecomedia, and postcolonial literature. Iheka is the author of the books African Ecomedia (2021) and Naturalizing Africa: Ecological Violence, Agency, and Postcolonial Resistance in African Literature (2018), and the editor of the MLA volume Teaching Postcolonial Environmental Literature and Media (2022).
