As part of a South-South collaborative project between Dr BMN College (Autonomous) in Mumbai, the postgraduate Department of English, SNDT Women’s University in Mumbai, and the English Department at Stellenbosch University, we invite you to two public lectures taking place at STIAS on Thursday, the 6th April between 10 and 11am. Prof Mala Pandurang (Dr BMN College): Global South Connectivities: Exploring Pedagogical Possibilities, and Dr Dhrupadi Chattopadhyay (SNDT Women’s University): Feminist assemblages in the Global South: Notes from contemporary Literary Practices.
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”.
“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
“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/
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.
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)
presenting at Linnaeus
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 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.
from left: Rose Lim, Dr. Edgar Nabutanyi and Associate Professor Ahmed Mulla
