Book Launch: Cajetan Iheka | Horizontal Comparison

Join us for a panel discussion with Yale colleagues in conversation around Cajetan Iheka’s new book, Horizontal Comparison: Africa, the Caribbean, and the Making of Black World Literature (University of Chicago Press, November 2026).

Joe Cleary, John M. Schiff Professor of English

Erica Edwards, Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor of English and Black Studies

Makedah Hughes, Ph.D. student, Black Studies and French

Jill Jarvis, Associate Professor of French

Moderator: Kaiama L. Glover, Professor of Black Studies and French

Horizontal Comparison: Africa, the Caribbean, and the Making of Black World Literature articulates new forms of transoceanic solidarity. The book challenges not only Western cultural hegemony in the study of global Black writing but also the very methodologies of comparative literary studies, offering fresh insights into reading, trauma, character, and the “worlding” of literature.

Cajetan Iheka is Professor of English; Director of the Whitney Humanities Center; Chair of the Council on African Studies, and Head of the Yale Africa Initiative.

Sponsored by Whitney Humanities Center and 20th/21st Century Colloquium, Department of English