Research in African Literatures (RAL), published by Indiana University Press, is the foremost peer-reviewed journal in African literary studies. Since its founding in 1970, it has published the foundational critical essays through which African literature has been theorised, historicised, and taught in the academy — from debates over language and authenticity in the 1970s and 1980s to contemporary engagements with African digital cultures, popular fiction, and world literature frameworks.
For the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ìbàdàn — the institution that, more than any other, shaped the early academic study of African literature through figures including Eldred Jones, Bernth Lindfors, and Wole Ṣóyínká himself — access to a sustained run of RAL completes a crucial research loop. The scholars who built African literary studies were often writing from or about Ìbàdàn; the journal that published their successors should be available there.
Our 23 issues fill specific gaps in the university library's existing RAL holdings, identified through consultation with departmental faculty.