Dr Nadia Sanger and Dr Megan Jones received a FINLO award to run a hybrid learning initiative with the English Department’s Honours students and MA students under the supervision of Dr Dhrupadi Chattopadhyay, SNDT University, Mumbai. The project is titled, “South-South Feminisms: A Feminist Approach to Cross-Cultural Learning”.
Congratulations to Dr Uhuru Phalafala on the publication of two new volumes:
Keorapetse Kgositsile: Collected Poems, 1969-2018 (co-edited with Phillippa Yaa De Villiers), University of Nebraska Press, 2023.
Mine Mine Mine, University of Nebraska Press, 2023.
eckards@sun.ac.za
TEL: +27 21 808 2043
TEACHING AREAS
Environmental Literature, Ecocriticism, (Southern) African Literature, Postcolonial & World Literatures, Critical Temporalities
RESEARCH AREAS
Environmental Humanities, (Southern) African Literature, Postcolonial Literature, Critical Temporalities
PUBLICATIONS
BOOK CHAPTERS
“Life & Times of Michael K.” The Bloomsbury Handbook to J.M. Coetzee. Eds. Andrew van der Vlies & Lucy Valerie Graham. Bloomsbury, 2023.
PEER-REVIEWED JOURNAL ARTICLES
“Elemental Humanity in Bessie Head’s When Rain Clouds Gather.” English Studies in Africa 66.1 (2023). 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1080/00138398.2023.2128490
“From Apartheid to the Planetary Present: Breaching Time in Nadine Gordimer’s Something Out There.” Social Dynamics 48.2 (2022). 207-223. https://doi.org/10.1080/02533952.2022.2085856
“The ‘baboon boy’ of the Eastern Cape and the making of the human in South Africa.” Social Dynamics 44.1 (2018). 146-157. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02533952.2018.1430477
“J.M. Coetzee’s Age of Iron and the Poetics of Resistance.” Journal of Commonwealth Literature 52.1 (2017). 70-83. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0021989415589832
“‘The Country of his Heart’: J.M. Coetzee, Wordsworth and the Karoo Farm.” English in Africa 42.2 (2015). 7-24. https://www.ajol.info/index.php/eia/article/view/122983
“J.M. Coetzee and the Politics of Selfhood.” English in Africa 39.1 (2012). 21-36. https://journals.co.za/content/iseaeng/39/1/EJC125856
“Reading Through the Gates: Structure, Desire and Subjectivity in J.M. Coetzee’s Elizabeth
Costello.” English in Africa 36.2 (2009). 63-77. https://journals.co.za/content/iseaeng/36/2/EJC47986
REVIEWS AND REVIEW ESSAYS
“Short takes on disjointed times: literary form and social thought in Graham K. Riach’s The Short Story After Apartheid.” Safundi, Sept. 3, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1080/17533171.2024.2375848
“Battling Ghosts From the Past and Building Walls: An Island by Karen Jennings.” Daily Maverick, Oct. 17, 2021. https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-10-17-battling-ghosts-from-the-past-and-building-walls-an-island-by-karen-jennings/
CREATIVE WRITING
“Let The Worms Have It”, short story, Johannesburg Review of Books, Vol. 6, Issue 6 (December 20, 2022). https://johannesburgreviewofbooks.com/2022/12/20/fiction-issue-read-let-the-worms-have-it-a-new-short-story-by-eckard-smuts/
“HomeTM”, short story, Johannesburg Review of Books, Vol. 6, Issue 2 (May 2, 2022). https://johannesburgreviewofbooks.com/2022/05/02/new-short-fiction-home-by-eckard-smuts/
Congratulations to Dr Uhuru Phalafala, who earned a Y1 NRF rating in November 2022, within five years of graduating with her PhD. As previously reported, Dr Phalafala was also recognized by the Future Professors program.
The Department of English also extends its warmest congratulations to former PhD student, Dr Jacky Kosgei on her tenure track appointment at the University of Tübingen, Germany, from January 2023. She has been hired on a professorial track in English in the field of “Culture of Knowledge/Global Epistemologies”.
Dr Rose Lim successfully defended her PhD viva in December 2022, with much praise from the examination panel for her thesis.
Finally, Department of English Research Associate, Dr Wesley Macheso, received an honourable mention for his article on transgender memoirs by South Africans in this year’s Queer African Studies Association competition for best article by an emergent scholar.
The Department warmly congratulates Dr Phalafala, Dr Kosgei, Dr Lim, and Dr Macheso for their fine and significant achievements to draw a busy and productive 2022 to a close.
Drawing on the expertise of visiting Professor Extraordinaire, Prof Meg Samuelson (University of Adelaide) and visiting researcher Assistant Professor Dr Martin Moraw (American University Cairo), the English Department recently invited graduate students and staff to a workshop on how to write for journal publication. This workshop took place on Friday 4 November at Devon Valley Hotel and Conference Centre.
Professor Samuelson looked at questions like ‘Why is it important to publish my research?’, ‘How do I identify a good publication outlet that fits my research?’, ‘How do I avoid predatory journals?’ and ‘How do I create an article out of a thesis chapter?’
Dr Moraw used one of his publications as a case study for the session on how to structure an argument and Professor Steiner, co-editor of the Taylor and Francis Journal Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies explained the review process and how to deal with the reviewers’ feedback in revising articles for publication.
Brighter Days
Selma Shiyoka, PhD
From 12 September to 16 September 2022, I attended a MultiLing Summer School at the University of Oslo, Norway. The theme for the summer school was “Communication and Environmental Justice: Sociocultural Linguistic Approaches” and its main objective was to consider how applied linguists can contribute to social justice concerns in a time of growing environmental challenges and climate change. Over the course of an idea-packed week, participants and invited lecturers shared and discussed their research to examine the connections between language, environment and social justice. My presentation was based on the introductory chapter of my doctoral dissertation, “Precarity and Resilience: An Ecofeminist Reading of the African Child in Fiction by Contemporary Women Writers”.
In preparation for the summer school, the invited lecturers sent us an extensive reading list and required our participation in different activities. For the first session, we were asked to bring and discuss an image, a piece of music, an object, anything that symbolizes and reflects our personal relationship to politics and its interrelationship with language/semiotics. The aim of this activity was to show how scholars can become political activists and how language can be used to communicate anger, resilience and hope. Throughout the week, lecturers presented their research in relation to the reading list. One of the main themes in these presentations was the abuse of animals by human animals. For instance, dairy cows are exploited and separated from their calf after birth; the milk produced is strictly for human consumption whilst the calf is formula fed. We visited a dairy farm where I saw how the cows live in a very small environment without much room for movement and are reared to serve humans. We were tasked to observe how cows interact among themselves and how they communicate with / respond to humans. During the summer school, I learnt that language plays a critical role in the way that anger and hope are understood in times of crisis, which I found essential as a scholar-activist. Although anger is perceived to be destructive, it can be used as a tool against oppressive systems and other injustices facing nature, human animals and nonhuman animals today. Hope is an affective agency which fuels forms of refusal and carries the potential to change the status quo.
I would like to thank Professor Christine Anthonissen in the Department of General Linguistics and Prof Tina Steiner in the Department of English at Stellenbosch University for supporting my application to attend the summer school. I also want to express my sincere gratitude to the MultiLing team and the INTPART project facilitators for sponsoring my travel from Namibia and stay in Oslo, enabling me to participate in this invaluable learning experience. I also want to thank my supervisor, Dr Jeanne Ellis, for her encouragement, support and guidance.
Concurrences and Connections: The Colonial Anthropocene
Linnaeus University Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, Växjo, Sweden (15-19 August 2022)
Lobke Minter (PhD student)
I was invited to present a paper at Concurrences and Connections: The Colonial Anthropocene, hosted by the Linnaeus University Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies in Växjo, Sweden (15-19 August 2022). The paper entitled “Scars, Resilience and Power in Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death” is based on a chapter in my PhD dissertation, “Speculative Gothic Fiction and the Scar as Trauma Trope: Imagining Hope through Horror”. My presentation focused on how resistance is embodied within the context of Okorafor’s postapocalyptic Africa, which is disproportionately affected by environmental degradation due to continued colonial and neo-colonial extraction of resources.
The summer school was attended by scholars from a range of different disciplines, such as anthropology, history, sociology, geology as well as literature. Every morning we started off with a theory session. Interdisciplinary and collaborative, the discussions delved into diverse topics, from the problematic construction of the Anthropocene to considering how academia and activism should and could intersect more powerfully. This critical awareness and mindfulness filtered into the presentations held in the afternoon, with robust discussions and feedback afterwards. Each presentation highlighted a facet of how imperial power structures are entangled with questions of environment and human relationships. The interdisciplinarity encouraged everyone to challenge themselves to step outside of their fields and consider different ways of engaging with the topics being discussed. I found myself thinking about how literary studies can contribute to activism and the importance of imagining the world as it could be.
The emphasis on collegiality created a discursively rich atmosphere. I have gained a lot from this experience, primarily in the form of having acquired new knowledge as well as feeling significantly encouraged within my own research journey. I feel incredibly privileged and grateful to have been able to attend the summer school and would like to thank Stellenbosch University’s International Office for the PGO overseas conference grant as well as the Linnaeus University Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies for their generous funding. Thanks also to Dr Jeanne Ellis for her unwavering support as my supervisor.
Rose Lim
Rose Lim is a PhD candidate with the English department at Stellenbosch University. Her research areas include African women’s writing with particular interest in women’s language, their multivalence and regional distinctiveness.
Rose was invited to present a paper at the recently concluded Archipelagic Memory Conference (2 – 4 August), organised by the University of Mauritius in collaboration with King’s College London and University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. She spoke on “Archipelagic Thinking and the Prisms of Mozambican Women’s Multivalent Articulations” focusing on the writings of Paulina Chiziane. In the presentation, she discussed Chiziane’s literary narratives, ruminating on the fractured regional representations found in Mozambique via the prisms of its women’s polyvocal articulations. She contended that history, memory and the divergent emergence of women-centric language in Chiziane’s Afro-Luso writings converge and find meaning with the polyphonic cadence exuded by archipelagic thought and its imaginaries. Drawing attention to the notion that these writings have errantly disengaged themselves from the thrall of hegemonic conventionalities, instead electing to journey unfettered in the fluid spatialities proffered by interlinking with archipelagic-centric sensibilities.
This enriching conference was attended by international delegates of intersecting specialisations and disciplines. Notable keynote speakers included Prof. Ananya Kabir, Prof. George Abungu and Prof. Stef Craps. Aside from the panel sessions, the delegates visited the related Intercontinental Slavery Museum and the UNESCO Heritage Aapravasi Ghat. Rose would like to warmly thank Prof. Tina Steiner for her encouragement and support. Also appreciative thanks to the delegates from Johannesburg for their invitation to the private visit at Beau Bassin Jewish Memorial. Finally, a profound thank you to the exceptional organisers of the conference, and their generous sponsors, which allowed interconnecting thinkers of Archipelagic thought to gather, share and learn from one other.
Stephanie de Villiers
From 15-21 May 2022, I attended a Summer School at Venice International University in Italy. My PhD thesis focusses on madness and gender in diasporic literature, and the Summer School was on migration and gender from a legal and literary perspective. This was an incredibly ambitious project, and in preparation we had to read three novels on migration: Adua by Igiaba Scego, The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka, and On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong. During the Summer School, we considered these texts in relation to legal cases on migration, and discussed how migration laws are gender-specific and do not always make room for the vulnerabilities and difficulties faced by women migrants, especially those who are forced into journeying far from their homes in order to seek asylum. What emerged from the discussions was the importance of literature in the construction of laws surrounding migration since it is through the telling of stories that we are able to learn about migrants’ lived experiences. In addition, literature, and the ability to critically consider and analyse stories play an important part in the interpretation of laws, which can affect the outcomes of human rights cases of migration. The final assignment of the Summer School was the perfect illustration of this. Working in groups, we were given a legal case on migration, and asked to do a feminist rewriting of the decision. My group’s case involved a man from Kiribati who had been denied asylum to New Zealand on the grounds that he was not individually persecuted. In our feminist rewriting, we changed the gender of the man to a pregnant woman with three children, all of whom had been born in New Zealand. We then argued that the family’s human rights provided legal grounds for their asylum. In our rewriting, we also included the fictional testimony of the woman, which I wrote in the form of a poem. Even though I was disappointed by the lack of focus on migration in Africa, it was an absolute pleasure for me to attend this Summer School, which reinvigorated my passion for my thesis. I am also incredibly grateful for Stellenbosch University’s International Office for providing me with a travel bursary, and for my supervisor, Dr Jeanne Ellis, for her support in this endeavour.
Read Stephanie’s poem, “Testimomy”, here.
