{{Short description|Nigerian American academic (born 1951)}} {{Infobox person |image = |caption = |birth_name = Jacob Kehinde Olupona |birth_date = {{Birth date and age|1951|2|05|df=yes}} |birth_place = Ondo State, Nigeria |education = B.A. Religious Studies University of Nigeria, 1975 M.A. History of Religions, Boston University, Boston (1981), PhD, History of Religions, Boston University, Boston (1983). |occupation = Professor, writer, scholar |notable_works = African Spirituality: Forms, Meanings and Expressions. City of 201 Gods: Ilé-Ifè in Time, Space, and the Imagination (University of California Press 2011) }} '''Jacob Kehinde Olupona''' ({{Audio|LL-Q34311 (yor)-Tunmise123-Jacob Kehinde.wav |Listen|help=no}}; born 1951) is a Nigerian-born American professor, writer, and scholar of religious studies. He is a professor of African Religious Traditions at the Harvard Divinity School with a joint appointment as Professor of African and African American Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University.<ref name="Jacob K. Olupona"/> Olupona was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in April 2023.<ref>{{cite web|title=New Members|url=https://www.amacad.org/new-members-2023|access-date=2023-04-20|publisher=American Academy of Arts & Sciences}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|date=2023-04-19|title=17 Harvard faculty elected to American Academy of Arts & Sciences|url=https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/04/17-harvard-faculty-elected-to-american-academy-of-arts-sciences/|access-date=2023-04-20|work=Harvard Gazette}}</ref>
==Biography== Olupona is a scholar of indigenous African religions who came to Harvard after serving as a professor at the University of California, Davis.<ref>{{cite web|title=Biography|url=https://scholar.harvard.edu/olupona/biocv|website=scholar.harvard.edu|language=en|access-date=2020-05-25}}</ref>
He is working on a study of the religious practices of the estimated one million Africans who have emigrated to the United States over the last 40 years, examining in particular several populations that remain relatively invisible in the American religious landscape: "reverse missionaries" who have come to the U.S. to establish churches, African Pentecostals in American congregations, American branches of independent African churches, and indigenous African religious communities in the U.S. His earlier research includes African spirituality and ritual practices, spirit possession, Pentecostalism, Yoruba festivals, animal symbolism, icons, phenomenology, and religious pluralism in Africa and the Americas.<ref name="Jacob K. Olupona">{{Cite web|title=Jacob K. Olupona|url=https://hds.harvard.edu/people/jacob-k-olupona|website=hds.harvard.edu|access-date=2020-05-25}}</ref>
In his forthcoming book Ile-Ife: The City of 201 Gods, he examines the modern urban mixing of ritual, royalty, gender, class, and power, and how the structure, content, and meaning of religious beliefs and practices permeate daily life.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Jacob K. Olupona|url=https://scholar.harvard.edu/olupona/home|website=scholar.harvard.edu|language=en|access-date=2020-05-26}}</ref>
He has authored or edited seven other books, including Kingship, Religion, and Rituals in a Nigerian Community: A Phenomenological Study of Ondo Yoruba Festivals, which has been used for ethnographic research among Yoruba-speaking communities.<ref>{{cite news|title=Olupona named professor of African studies, religion|url=https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2006/04/olupona-named-professor-of-african-studies-religion/|date=2006-04-13|work=Harvard Gazette|access-date=2020-05-25}}</ref>
Olupona has received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, the Ford Foundation, the Davis Humanities Institute, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the Getty Foundation. He also founded the IIAS in Ile-Ife, Nigeria.<ref>{{cite book|last=Akinkugbe|first=Oladipo O.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wi3gDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT248|title=Evolution of Ondo Kingdom Over 500 years (1510-2010+)|date=2014-06-23|publisher=eBook Partnership|isbn=978-978-926-224-3}}</ref> He has served on the editorial boards of three journals and as president of the African Association for the Study of Religion.<ref>{{cite web|title=Jacob Olupona|url=https://aaas.fas.harvard.edu/people/jacob-olupona|website=aaas.fas.harvard.edu|access-date=2020-05-25}}</ref> In 2000, Olupona received an honorary doctorate in divinity from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Untitled Document|url=http://orfaleacenter.global.ucsb.edu/luce/luce12/participants/olupona.html|website=orfaleacenter.global.ucsb.edu|access-date=2020-05-25}}{{Dead link|date=September 2024 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref>
==Early life and education== Jacob K. Olupona was born into a family where the lineages of both parents were well known Anglican and non-Anglican priests.<ref>{{cite web|title=Religion at the Crossroads in Nigeria|url=https://rlp.hds.harvard.edu/news/bonds-boundaries-and-bondage-faith-religion-crossroads-nigeria|website=rlp.hds.harvard.edu|access-date=2020-05-26|archive-date=2019-07-04|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190704045805/https://rlp.hds.harvard.edu/news/bonds-boundaries-and-bondage-faith-religion-crossroads-nigeria|url-status=dead}}</ref> The many religious activities and denominations he experienced in the villages, towns and cities he grew up in interested him, greatly. He watched as people mix traditions. As he grew older, the perception of multi-religious traditions of Islam, Christianity and indigenous religion opened spaces for the drive for his early scholarship on the ideology and rituals of Yoruba sacred kingship.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Jacob K. Olupona|url=https://hds.harvard.edu/people/jacob-k-olupona|website=hds.harvard.edu|access-date=2020-05-26}}</ref>
He graduated from the university in 1975 and did his National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) in Ilorin.<ref>{{cite web|title=Bonds, Boundaries, and Bondage of Faith|url=https://wcfia.harvard.edu/publications/bonds-boundaries-and-bondage-faith|last=Olupona|first=Jacob|year=2013|website=wcfia.harvard.edu|access-date=2020-05-25}}</ref> During his service year in Ilorin, the host Governor of Kwara state, Colonel Ibrahim Taiwo was killed in a military coup as well as General Murtala Muhammed which filled the nation with unease in 1976. The memorial church service held for the general and the preaching of an Anglican Priest in the event heightened his scholarly imagination. Jacob K. Olupona began to think deeply of the connection of religious pluralism and civil religion in Nigeria. These events made him appreciate his own religious background and the freedom of worship in southwestern Nigeria.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Bonds, Boundaries, and Bondage of Faith|url=https://wcfia.harvard.edu/publications/bonds-boundaries-and-bondage-faith|last=Olupona|first=Jacob|date=2013|website=wcfia.harvard.edu|access-date=2020-05-30}}</ref>
Olupona received his BA degree from the University of Nigeria and his MA degree and Ph.D. from Boston University.<ref name="Jacob K. Olupona"/>
==Awards== *Nigerian National Order of Merit Award (2007)<ref>{{cite web|url=https://news-archive.hds.harvard.edu/news/2011/02/07/olupona-receives-nigerian-national-order-of-merit-award|title=Olupona Receives Nigerian National Order of Merit Award|publisher=Harvard Divinity School|date=2008-02-20|access-date=2024-09-15}}</ref>
==Publications==
===Books=== *''African Religions: A Very Short Introduction'', {{ISBN|978-0199790586}}, Oxford University Press, 2014 *''African Immigrant Religions in America'' (New York University 2007)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Pham|first=J. Peter|date=December 2009|title=African Immigrant Religions in America. Edited by Jacob K. Olupona and Regina Gemignani. New York, NY: New York University Press, 2007. viii + 352 pp. $75.00 cloth, $23.00 paper|url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/politics-and-religion/article/african-immigrant-religions-in-america-edited-by-jacob-k-olupona-and-regina-gemignani-new-york-ny-new-york-university-press-2007-viii-352-pp-7500-cloth-2300-paper/A5B2FA69038FB128D7E6EF78D82FF68E|journal=Politics and Religion|volume=2|issue=3|pages=459–462|doi=10.1017/S1755048309990319|s2cid=145320235 |issn=1755-0491|url-access=subscription}}</ref> *''Orisa Devotion as World Religion: The Globalization of Yoruba Religious Culture'' <ref>{{Cite journal|last=Bongmba|first=Elias K.|date=2009|title=Orisa Devotion as World Religion: The Globalization of Yoruba Religious Culture - Edited by Jacob Olupona and Terry Rey|journal=Religious Studies Review|volume=35|issue=2|pages=135|doi=10.1111/j.1748-0922.2009.01347_2.x|issn=0319-485X}}</ref> *''Beyond Primitivism: Indigenous Religious Traditions and Modernity'' (Routledge, 2004)<ref name=":0"/> *''Experiences of Place (Religions of the World)'' (Harvard Center for the Study of World Religions 2003) <ref>{{Cite book|last=MacDonald, Mary N., 1946-|title=Experiences of place|date=2003|publisher=Distributed by Harvard University Press for the Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School|isbn=0-945454-37-6|oclc=51482420}}</ref> *''African Spirituality: Forms, Meanings and Expressions'' (Herder & Herder, 2001)<ref name=":0">{{cite web|url=https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/401993.Jacob_K_Olupona|title=Jacob K. Olupona|website=www.goodreads.com|access-date=2017-10-20}}</ref> *''Religious Plurality in Africa: Essays in Honour of John S. Mbiti'' (Mouton de Gruyter, 1993)<ref name=":0"/> *''Religion and Peace in Multi-faith Nigeria'' (African Books Collective Ltd, 1992) <ref>{{Cite journal|year=1996|title=Book Review: Religion and Peace in a Multi-Faith Nigeria|journal=Missiology: An International Review|volume=24|issue=3|pages=426–427|doi=10.1177/009182969602400341|s2cid=220986700|issn=0091-8296}}</ref> *''Kingship, Religion and Rituals in a Nigerian Community'' (Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1991)<ref>{{Cite web|title=Kingship, religion, and rituals in a Nigerian community : a phenomenological study of Ondo Yoruba festivals / / by Jacob K. Olupọna.|url=https://siris-libraries.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?uri=full=3100001~!431308!0|website=siris-libraries.si.edu|access-date=2020-05-25}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Falola|first=Toyin|date=1992|title=OLUPONA, J. K., Kingship, Religion, and Rituals in a Nigerian Community: A Phenomenological Study of Ondo Yoruba Festivals, Stockholm, Almqvist and Wiksell International (Stockholm Studies in Comparative Religion, No. 28), 1991, 195 pp., 91 22 01382 2|journal=Journal of Religion in Africa|volume=22|issue=3|pages=279–280|doi=10.1163/157006692x00266|issn=0022-4200}}</ref> *''African Traditional Religions in Contemporary Society'' (Paragon House, 1991)<ref name=":0"/> *''City of 201 Gods: Ilé-Ifè in Time, Space, and the Imagination'' (University of California Press 2011)<ref>{{cite book|url=https://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520265561|title=City of 201 Gods}}</ref>
===Articles=== *"Osun across the Waters: A Yoruba goddess in Africa and the Americas." ''African Affairs'' 104.416 (2005): 548–550.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Olupona|first=Jacob K.|date=2005-07-01|title=Osun across the Waters: A Yoruba goddess in Africa and the Americas, edited by Joseph M. Murphy and Mei-Mei Sanford. Bloomington, IL: Indiana University Press, 2001. x + 273 pp. US$29.95 paperback. ISBN 0-253-21459-9 (paperback).|journal=African Affairs|volume=104|issue=416|pages=548–550|doi=10.1093/afraf/adi059|issn=1468-2621}}</ref> *Foreword to ''Women in the Yoruba Religious Sphere''. Ed. Oyeronke Olajubu. State University of New York Press, 2003.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Peel|first=J. D. Y.|date=2005|title=OYERONKE OLAJUBU: Women in the Yoruba Religious Sphere. (Foreword by Jacob. K. Olupona.) (McGill Studies in the History of Religions.) xii, 172 pp. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. $16.95.|journal=Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies|volume=68|issue=1|pages=182–183|doi=10.1017/s0041977x05640050|s2cid=162966496|issn=0041-977X}}</ref> *Review of "Odun Ifa: Ifa Festival" and "Insight and Artistry in African Divination." ''Research in African Literatures'' 34.2 (2003): 225–229.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Olupona|first=Jacob Obafemi Kehinde|date=2003|title=Odun Ifa: Ifa Festival, and: Insight and Artistry in African Divination (review)|journal=Research in African Literatures|volume=34|issue=2|pages=225–229|doi=10.1353/ral.2003.0044|s2cid=161408494|issn=1527-2044}}</ref> *"Review of 'Religious Encounter and the Making of Yoruba.'" ''The International Journal of African Historical Studies'' 36.1 (2003): 182–186.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Olupona|first1=Jacob K.|last2=Peel|first2=J. D. Y.|date=2003|title=Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba|journal=International Journal of African Historical Studies|volume=36|issue=1|pages=182|doi=10.2307/3559350|jstor=3559350|issn=0361-7882}}</ref> *"Women's Rituals, Kingship and Power among the Ondo-Yoruba of Nigeria." ''Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences'' 810 (1997): 315–336.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Olupon|first=Jacob K.|title=Women's Rituals, Kingship and Power Among the Ondo-Yoruba of Nigeria|year=1997|journal=Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences|volume=810|issue=1 Queens, Queen|pages=315–336|doi=10.1111/j.1749-6632.1997.tb48133.x|bibcode=1997NYASA.810..315O|s2cid=84256076|issn=0077-8923}}</ref> *"Report of the Conference 'Beyond Primitivism: Indigenous Religious Traditions and Modernity.'" ''Numen'' 44.3 (1997): 323–345.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Olupona|first=Jacob|date=1997|title=Report of the Conference, Beyond Primitivism: Indigenous Religious Traditions and Modernity, March 28-31, 1996, University of California, Davis|journal=Numen|volume=44|issue=3|pages=323–345|doi=10.1163/1568527971655896|issn=0029-5973}}</ref> *"The Study of Yoruba Religious Tradition in Historical Perspective." ''Numen'' 40.3 (1993): 240–273.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Olupona|first=Jacob K.|date=1993|title=The Study of Yoruba Religious Tradition in Historical Perspective|journal=Numen|volume=40|issue=3|pages=240–273|doi=10.1163/156852793x00176|issn=0029-5973}}</ref> *"The spirituality of Africa" ''The Harvard Gazette'' (2015).<ref>{{Cite web|date=2015-10-06|title=The spirituality of Africa|url=https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2015/10/the-spirituality-of-africa/|access-date=2020-11-30|website=Harvard Gazette|language=en-US}}</ref>
==References== {{Reflist}}
==External links== *[http://hds.harvard.edu/people/jacob-k-olupona Harvard Divinity School faculty biography]
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Olupona, Jacob}} Category:1951 births Category:Living people Category:Boston University alumni Category:University of Nigeria alumni Category:Harvard Divinity School faculty Category:University of California, Davis faculty Category:American people of Nigerian descent Category:American people of Yoruba descent Category:Yoruba academics Category:21st-century African-American academics Category:21st-century American academics Category:Anthropologists of the Yoruba Category:American anthropologists Category:Nigerian anthropologists Category:Nigerian social scientists Category:Recipients of the Nigerian National Order of Merit Award