Professor Apter holds appointments in both the History Department and the International Institute, where he teaches courses in African Studies and in International Development Studies.

Apter’s ethnographic research focuses on Yoruba culture in southwest Nigeria (View Yoruba Ritual Archive online). He also works on the Africa diaspora in the Caribbean. Apter also works on ritual, memory, and indigenous knowledge as well as colonial culture, commodity fetishism and state spectacle. His historical ethnography of Yoruba hermeneutics informs his research on “syncretism” and creolization in West Africa and the Americas.

Apter’s books include:

• Beyond Words: Discourse and Critical Agency in Africa (University of Chicago Press, 2007)
• Black Critics and Kings: The Hermeneutics of Power in Yoruba Society (University of Chicago Press, 1992)
• The Pan-African Nation: Oil and the Spectacle of Culture in Nigeria (University of Chicago Press, 2005)