Wendell Nii Laryea Adjetey
Postdoc (Harvard University)
Ph.D., (Yale University)
M.Phil., (Yale)
M.A., (Yale)
M.A., (University of Toronto)
Honours B.A. (University of Toronto, USMC)
North America (including Caribbean)
Africa
(Letters of Recommendation: see below)
By Appointment
Wendell Nii Laryea Adjetey (Nii Laryea Osabu I, Atrékor Wé Oblahii kè Oblayéé Mantsè) is Associate Professor of post-Reconstruction U.S. and African Diaspora history and William Dawson Scholar. His research examines the social, cultural, intellectual, political, and military histories of transnational Black freedom struggles that connected North America to the broader Atlantic World.
Dr. Adjetey is working on his second and third book projects on warfare and African-led abolitionism on the Gulf of Guinea Coast, and how state and paramilitary violence disrupted and “quarantined” revolutionary Black politics in the United States and Americas, respectively.
Dr. Adjetey’s first monograph is Cross-Border Cosmopolitans: The Making of a Pan-African North America (UNC Press, Jan. 2023). It situates fundamental questions of twentieth-century U.S. history—immigration, civil rights, racial identity, revolution, counter-revolution, imperialism, and neo-colonialism—within a diasporic North American and transatlantic frame. Cross-Border Cosmopolitans is the 2024 winner of The Governor General's History Award for Scholarly Research, marking the first time that a Black author has earned this commendation. It won the Canadian Historical Association's Best Scholarly Book in Canadian History Prize, which is awarded to a "work of history judged to have made the most significant contribution to an understanding of the Canadian past." Cross-Border Cosmopolitans earned Honourable Mention from the Organization of American Historians for the Frederick Jackson Turner Award, which is given to the best book in American history by a first-time author. It was Finalist for the Association for the Study of African American Life and History Book Prize, the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora Outstanding First Book Prize, and designated one of the "Best Black History Books of 2023" by the African American Intellectual History Society. Reviewers have described Cross-Border Cosmopolitans as "a remarkable scholarly achievement," H-Net; "sophisticated, ambitious, and compellingly argued," CHOICE; "well researched and makes tremendous contributions to Black Atlantic...history," American Historical Review; an "innovative approach to understanding the development of global movements for Black freedom," Journal of American History.
Cross-Border Cosmopolitans is the result of a major transformation of Dr. Adjetey’s Ph.D. dissertation, which won Yale University’s Edwin M. Small Prize for “outstanding” contribution to U.S. history, Sylvia Ardyn Boone Prize for African American Studies, the Canadian Studies Prize, and the Willard “Woody” Brittain, Jr. Award.
Dr. Adjetey is as dedicated to teaching as he is to research. He is the recipient of McGill University's H. Noel Fieldhouse Award for Distinguished Teaching, and the Principal's Prize for Excellence in Teaching. His undergraduate lecture courses and seminars cover U.S., African American, African Canadian, African Diaspora, and global history. He offers graduate seminars on various topics.
An active member of and contributor to several North American historical associations, Dr. Adjetey shares his expertise broadly in service of the profession, including in civil society, where he is a sought after expert in legal proceedings involving African peoples and their justice claims. He has many years of experience as Director on multiple Boards that promote peace-building and equitable educational access, pluralism and impact investing, forestation and poverty alleviation, among other causes, in North America and Africa. He remains a committed public intellectual and frequent contributor to civic discourse, writing many op-eds for periodicals, such as The Washington Post, Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Walrus, and more. Before pursuing an academic career, Dr. Adjetey worked in youth gang prevention and intervention in north Toronto and in similar capacities to help Black youth, especially boys and young men, gain a healthy sense of self through an understanding of the African past.
Selected Awards and Honours:
Harry Jerome Award (Academic Professional), 2024
William Dawson Scholar, 2022
Distinguished Influencer Award, University of Toronto African Alumni Association, 2022
Austin B. Creel Trust Award, Yale University, 2016
Edla J. McPherson Fellow, Yale University, 2016
Dr. Edward Alexander Bouchet Graduate Honor Society, 2015
Canadian Studies Prize for Best Scholarly Research Paper, Yale University, 2013
Selected Fellowships and Grants:
SSHRC Insight Development Grant, 2022-2023
Visiting Research Scholar, Princeton University (regretfully declined), 2019-2020
W. L. Mackenzie King Fellowship, Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, 2018-2019
Visiting Scholar and Pre-Doctoral Fellow, MIT, 2017-2018
Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, 2014-2018
Visiting Scholar and Senior Resident Fellow at Massey College, University of Toronto, 2016-2017
Echoing Green Global Fellowship, 2015-2017
Marcus Garvey Foundation, 2016
German Historical Institute, 2015
Social Science and Policy Forum, University of Pennsylvania, 2013
Selected Journal Articles:
“Bridging Borders: African North Americans in Great Lakes Cities, 1920s–1940s,” Journal of American History, 110, no. 1, (2023).
“In Search of Ethiopia: Messianic Pan-Africanism and the Problem of the Promised Land, 1919–1931,” Canadian Historical Review, 102, no. 1, (2021).
Edited Volumes:
Inaugural Editor
Yale Journal of Canadian Studies, 1, no. 1 (2023)
“Preface to Winks’s The Blacks in Canada: A History”
“Petitioning Power: Canadian Racial Consciousness Meets Alabama Injustice, 1958” in M. Johnson and F. Aladejebi (eds.), Unsettling the Great White North (UTP, 2022).
Selected Lectures:
“Towards a Methodology on the Integrated Histories of the United States and African World,” American History Seminar, University of Cambridge, May 2025
“Cross-Border Cosmopolitans, Transatlantic Ties,” Keynote, Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University, June 2024
"Historical Consciousness and the Dawning of the African World Revolution," Keynote, Institute of African Studies, Emerging Scholar Conference, Carleton University, May 2024
“‘Follow the North Star to Canada’: Draft Resisters and the Underground Railroad,” Shannon Lecture, Carleton University, November 2023
"The United States and Cold War anti-Black Counterinsurgency," American Studies, Universität Kassel, November 2023.
“Cross-Border Cosmopolitans and Cold War Counterrevolution,” Canadian Studies/African American Studies, UC Berkeley, October 2023
“Father, Son, and Holy Malcolm: Gender and Cold War anti-Black Counterinsurgency in North America,” Homecoming Lecture, McGill University, October 2023
“In the Wake of Black Power: Arms Smuggling, Revolution, and Counterrevolution in the Atlantic World,” Center for the Study of Africa and the African Diaspora, NYU, November 2022
“1919: The Year of the Revolutionary Black Messiah,” Keynote, Rare Books and Special Collections, McGill University, February 2022.
“The Great Paradox: Chattel Slavery in North America,” Annual Invited Slavery and the Law Lecture, Faculty of Law, McGill University, October 2021.
Conferences:
Convener: “Pluralism in a Historical Context: Challenges and Opportunities in North America,” Harvard University, December 2019.
Letters of Recommendation:
It is best to solicit letters from faculty with whom you have taken multiple courses, performed well, and who know you in a meaningful way. If you desire a letter from Dr. Adjetey, you must have taken at least two courses with him and earned a B+ or higher. It behooves one who seeks a letter to make an effort to know Dr. Adjetey, especially if you took his larger lecture courses. The most effective letters make a substantive statement about a student's leadership, temperament, collegiality, oral and written communication skills, work ethic, motivation for and likelihood to succeed in graduate or professional school, in addition to the student's intellect and grades earned. Given the demands on Dr. Adjetey's schedule and frequent requests for letters, students must ask for recommendations a minimum of three months prior to application deadlines.