2016-2017 Africana Studies Fulbright Fellows

Filbert Mulinda is a Tanzanian national born in the western region of Tanzania East Africa on October 10th 1991. He went to secondary school in 2006 to 2009 where he obtained a certificate of secondary education. From 2010 to 2012, he went for advanced secondary education and obtained an advanced certificate of secondary education. He currently holds a bachelor degree of Arts with Education (B.A-ed) from the University of Dar es salaam, majoring in English and Kiswahili.and Kiswahili to secondary level and has been an occasional interpreter with the Rejoice and Hope Ministries International, An American organization that provides missionary and humanitarian services to poor countries. Mulinda is a 9th child in the family of 12 children.

As an English language teacher, he has always longed to study in an English speaking country as this would increase his English speaking skills as well as teaching the language. He has a great interest in music especially Country Music and his greatest country singers are Dolly Parton, Kenny Rodgers, Don Williams, Charlie Pride and many more.

Kayode Odumboni is a Yoruba Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis. Kayode holds a B.A in English from the University of Lagos, Nigeria and a National Diploma in Mass Communications from Lagos State Polytechnic, Nigeria.

His research interests border essentially on the connection between literature and philosophy; the profound role that philosophy plays in the literary enterprise and how, in exchange, literature philosophizes about life. Therefore, such topics as modernism, post-modernism, feminism, existentialism, catch his interest.

Kayode has worked as a teacher at many places and across various educational levels – secondary school and post-secondary school levels, particularly. He worked as a Graduate Assistant at the Department of English, Plateau State University, Bokkos, Plateau State, Nigeria while observing the compulsory national youth service. He has also had various stints in journalism, having worked with two of the most prominent national dailies in the country, The Nation and Nigerian Tribune newspapers.

On the days the Muse is kind to him, Kayode writes poetry and short fiction. He has been published in print and online. His work appears in Footmarks: Poems on One Hundred Years of Nigeria’s Nationhood.