Warfield-Center

Overview

The John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies offers a Yoruba Studies Program that fosters an understanding of Yoruba politics, aesthetics, and spiritual cosmology that is diasporic in focus. Not only is Yorubaland of Nigeria considered, but nearby African countries such as Benin and Togo,  as well as Brazil, Cuba, Trinidad, the United States (particularly Miami and New York City), and Puerto Rico are studied. These diasporic areas are positioned as integral components of any contemporary understanding of Yoruba reality.

Yoruba

Yoruba is spoken in West Africa and expecially Southwestern Nigeria, and has approximately 30-40 million native speakers. Language communities exist in other parts of Africa, as well as Europe and the Americas, and Yoruba language remants are used in many Afro-American religions in the Americas and the Caribbean.