Distinguished University Professor
Graduate Program Director
Office: 208 Divinity and Religious Studies Building
Phone: 336.758.5459
Email: ilesanmi@wfu.edu
Simeon Ilesanmi received his PhD from Southern Methodist University and his JD from Wake Forest University School of Law. He teaches courses in comparative ethics, international human rights, religion and law, ethics of war and peace, and African religions. He is the author of Religious Pluralism and the Nigerian State (Ohio University Press, 1997) and numerous articles and book chapters on African religion, ethics, war and politics. He is an Associate Editor of Journal of Religious Ethics and serves on the editorial boards of several other learned journals. His current and ongoing research interests focus on human rights, ethics of war, and religion, law and politics in Africa.
JD, Wake Forest University School of Law (2004)
Ph.D., Southern Methodist University (Religious Ethics), 1988-1993
B.A. First Class Honors, University of Ife, Nigeria (Religious Studies), 1987
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
“Africa’s Poverty, Human Rights, and a Just Society,” in Religion and Poverty: Pan African Perspective ed. Peter Paris (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009), 293-316.
“Methodism and Politics in Africa,” in The Oxford Handbook of Methodist Studies ed. William J. Abraham and James Kirby (Oxford: OUP, 2009), 697-711
“A Response to Hans Lucht’s ‘Violence and Morality: The Concession of a Loss in a Ghanaian Fishing Village’” Journal of Religious Ethics 38.3 (2010), 478-484.
“Introduction: Islam and Just War Tradition,” forthcoming in Journal of Church and State (2011)
“Shari’a Reasoning, Political Legitimacy, and Democratic Visions in Islam,” forthcoming in Journal of Church and State (Winter 2011)
“Bearing Witness: Poetry, Prison Discourse and Communal Struggles in Human Rights Education,” forthcoming in Human Rights Quarterly (Winter 2011)
“Disestablishment Without Impartiality: A Case-Study Examination of the Religious Clauses in the Nigerian Constitution,” forthcoming in St. John’s Law Review (2011)
“Accommodation as Establishment: State sponsorship of religious pilgrimages in Nigeria,” in Simeon Ilesanmi, Wilson Parker and Win-Chiat Lee (eds.), The Rule of Law and the Rule of God, forthcoming (University of Virginia Press).
“Beyond Accommodation: Religion and Civil Disobedience in Africa,” in Religion and Power in Africa and the African Diaspora, in Simeon Ilesanmi, Akintunde Akinade and Elias Bongmba, forthcoming (Ohio University Press)
- REL 107: Introduction to African Religions
- REL 330: Comparative Religious Ethics
- REL 331: Religion and Law
- REL 335: Religious Ethics & the Problem of War
- REL 336: Religious Traditions and Human Rights
- REL 338: Religion, Ethics, & Politics
- REL 339/639: Religions of Africa
- REL 731: Figures and Traditions in Religious Ethics