Ohaegbulam, Festus Ugboaja

PERSONAL: Male. Education: Government Teachers' Training College (Uyo, Nigeria), teacher's certificate, 1955; University of London, certificate of education, 1960; Evangel University (Springfield, MO), B.A., 1963; Fordham University, M.A., 1964; University of Denver, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES: Home—6109 112th Ave., Tampa, FL 33617-3131. Office—Department of Government and International Affairs, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL 33620-9951. E-mail—ohaegbul@chuma1.cas.usf.edu.

CAREER: Assemblies of God School, Umuokatawom, Nigeria, headmaster, 1957–60; Regis College, Denver, CO, teaching fellow, 1966–67; Southern University, Baton Rouge, LA, associate professor of political science, 1967–72; University of South Florida, Tampa, associate professor, 1972–76, professor of government and international affairs, 1977–, director of Africana studies, 1977–91. Louisiana State University, visiting professor, 1970–72; University of Florida, visiting research scholar at Center for African Studies, 1986, visiting research associate, 2001; speaker at other institutions, including Bethune-Cookman College, 1990, and Institute of Oriental Studies, Tashkent, Uzbekistan, USSR, 1991. Guest on local media programs; public speaker; workshop organizer and presenter. Tampa Human Rights Council, member, 1988–94.

MEMBER: International Association of Africanist Scholars, International Studies Association, African Studies Association, African Heritage Studies Association (member of board of directors, 1992–), Royal African Association (England), Southern Association of Africanists, Florida Political Science Association, SERVE, Phi Kappa Phi.

AWARDS, HONORS: Grants from Southern Education Foundation, 1974, National Science Foundation, 1979–80, 1980–81, and National Endowment for the Humanities, 1982, 1986, 1988.

WRITINGS:

Nationalism in Colonial and Post-Colonial Africa, University Press of America (Lanham, MD), 1977.

Nigeria and the U.N. Mission to the Democratic Republic of the Congo: A Case Study of the Formative Stages of Nigeria's Foreign Policy, University Presses of Florida (Gainesville, FL), 1982.

The Post-Colonial Era in Africa: Traumas and Opportunities; A Foreign Affairs Special Anthology, Foreign Affairs (New York, NY), 1990.

Toward an Understanding of the African Experience from Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, University Press of America (Lanham, MD), 1990.

A Concise Introduction to American Foreign Policy, Peter Lang (New York, NY), 1999.

Africa in World Affairs: A Concise Companion Compendium; A Foreign Affairs Custom Anthology, Foreign Affairs (New York, NY), 2001.

West African Responses to European Imperialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, University Press of America (Lanham, MD), 2002.

U.S. Policy in Postcolonial Africa: Four Case Studies in Conflict Resolution, Peter Lang (New York, NY), 2004.

Contributor to books, including Human Rights and Third World Development, edited by G. W. Shepherd and V. Nanda, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1985; Introduction to Africana Studies, edited by Mario Azevedo, Carolina Academic Press (Durham, NC), 1993; State and Society in Africa: Perspectives on Continuity and Change, edited by Feraidoon Shams, University Press of America (Lanham, MD), 1995; African Perspectives on African-American Writers, edited by Femi Ojo-Ade, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1996; and Comparative Democratization and Peaceful Change in Single-Party Dominant Politics, edited by Marco Rimanelli, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1999. Contributor of articles and reviews to periodicals, including Mediterranean Quarterly: Journal of Global Issues, New England Journal of History, Journal of African Political Studies, Twenty-first-Century Afro Review, Africa Today, Vision, Journal of the Third World Spectrum, New Political Science, Trans Africa Forum, and Journal of African Policy Studies.

SIDELIGHTS: Festus Ugboaja Ohaegbulam told CA: "My personal and professional interest as a scholar and university professor first got me interested in writing. I wanted to update my knowledge in the field since teaching and research go together. The need to contribute to the existing pool of knowledge in my field and to communicate my research findings to students, other academics, and the general reading public influences my work.

"My writing process begins with research—gathering information from critical sources, including interviews, libraries, and the Internet. Second, I organize the collected data in order to write and refine it. Then, I obtain critical comments from other scholars and refine and address the necessary critical comments and suggestions. Finally, I review the manuscript for updates and deletions, and grammatical and structural corrections.

"The more I research, the more I learn that knowledge is relative and infinite; one can always learn more. My writing skills improve the more I write. In terms of my favorite book, it is difficult to say. I like all types. But perhaps one—U.S. Policy in Postcolonial Africa: Four Case Studies in Conflict Resolution—it combines history, international relations, and political science and demonstrates my much-improved writing skills."