Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie (Ph.D. Northwestern University) is Associate Professor of Art History at the department of History of Arts and Architecture and Acting Director of the Center for Black Studies Research at the University of California Santa Barbara. An expert in the African and African Diaspora Arts and Visual Culture, Ogbechie's research evaluates Alternative Modernities and the colonial and postcolonial conventions of representation in the arts and visual cultures of African and African Diaspora populations. He is the Founder and Director of Aachron Knowledge Systems and founder of the Nollywood Foundation, which inaugurated a scholarly discourse on contemporary African Visual Culture and New Media from the perspective of the internationally acclaimed Nigerian Video Film Industry. He is founder and editorial director of Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture. He also serves on the editorial board many scholarly journals and is a curatorial adviser to the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco. His book, Ben Enwonwu: Making of an African Modernist is forthcoming from the University of Rochester Press in 2008. His articles and reviews have appeared in African Arts, Arts Journal, NKA: Journal of Contemporary African Art, Revue Noire, Ijele, Farafina, and several important art history anthologies.