English at Stellenbosch University

2020. A year of many obstacles, but also many achievements. Despite the challenges posed by working remotely under various lockdown levels during the Covid-19 pandemic, colleagues in the English Department at Stellenbosch University (SU) have pressed on. Excellence, continuity in teaching and research: these are important, though sometimes we have simply done our best under horrible circumstances. And actually, that best is not looking too bad! Here’s a brief overview of some great achievements and activities, thus far.

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Professor Louise Green’s book, Fragments from the History of Loss: Nature and the Postcolony has recently been published by Penn State University Press.  The book has been recognised as a significant contribution to the politicising of the Anthropocene in contexts of postcolonial scholarship. In the words of Jennifer Wentzel, “With bracing nuance and salutary attention to inequality and immiseration, this scintillating book sifts through slices of time and fragments of nature in order to assemble shards of wisdom for living – lightly, with less – in the Anthropocene.”

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Dr Uhuru Phalafala has for almost two years been leading an initiative to re-publish a volume called Malibongwe: Poems from the Struggle by ANC Women, now out from uHlanga. The book is the “first South African edition of a Struggle classic…banned by the apartheid regime – a book in and of exile,” featuring “poems written by women in ANC camps and offices throughout Africa and the world”. This re-issue of Malibongwe (authorised by the original editor Sono Molefe) “re-establishes a place for women artists in the history of South Africa’s liberation. These are the struggles within the Struggle”, as is argued in a new preface by Dr Phalafala, which outlines some of the book’s publishing history.

Dr Phalafala was interviewed in August by news24’s Lindokuhle Nkosi in a Q & A piece called ‘Vernaculars of the Spirit’. Read it here.

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With a multi-institutional editorial team, Professor Tina Steiner and SU Prof Extraordinaire Evan Mwangi of Northwestern, worked collaboratively on a Wits University Press edition of DDT Jabavu’s travelogue In India and East Africa / E-Indiya nase East Africa, published in isiXhosa and English. The book represents a long, even labyrinthine, journey for the editors, across institutions, languages, cultures, continents, mediating between the politics of the past and the claims of the present. In re-rendering Jabavu’s experiences and views, it offers a very important and unusual contribution to the field.

Read about this groundbreaking volume here.

Dr Lauren Van der Rede has been selected for Stellenbosch University’s participation in the national ‘Early Career Academic Development (ECAD) Programme’. This institutional guidance, mentoring and grant will help to boost her already strengthening career.

Dr Tilla Slabbert is the host for a Subcommittee A Postdoc Fellowship held by Dr Lizelle Smit. The archival project focuses on recovering nineteenth and twentieth century South African women’s stories and histories. On the strength of Dr Smit’s excellent publication record, the award has been extended for a further year. 

Professor Sally Ann Murray has been working with departmental colleague Dr Tilla Slabbert and University of the Western Cape (UWC) scholar Prof F Fiona Moolla, on a special issue of a/b Auto/Biography Studies.  Addressing questions of ‘the AutobiogrAfrical’, the issue is just out from Routledge. Dr Nadia Sanger wrote an essay for the collection, titled ‘Bending Bodies, Signing Words: Reshaping a Father and a Feminist Practice’ .

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Also, with Prof Kobus Moolman of UWC, Murray has co-edited the upcoming Spring 2020 issue of New Contrast, featuring creative work by senior students in the English departments of SU and UWC. This project is supported by her Andrew W Mellon 30^th Anniversary Artists in Residence Grant, which this year saw poet Rustum Kozain teaching in the SU English Department, with artist Garth Erasmus in SU Visual Arts. Erasmus’ artwork features on the cover of the a/b special issue. Murray is also pleased with her own small creative joys, having had two poems selected for the ClemenGold Project (“The Mother of All Naartjies” and “Unforgettable”).

Dryad Press and the SU English Department have initiated an annual publishing internship, designed to offer the selected student an insight into the skills of publishing. The project was piloted in 2019, mentoring Honours student Caryn Oram (now pursuing an MA at Pretoria University). The 2020 Dryad intern is English 3 student Sarah Uheida, a poet and memoirist in the making whose work has featured in literary journals such as fresh.ink., Plume, Blindeye, the South African, and Eunoia Review.

Research Associate Dr Tyrone August’s book, Dennis Brutus, the South African Years, was published earlier in 2020 and several launches are forthcoming, with a departmental seminar discussion to be hosted later this year. The book has received attention in the USA and Dr August has been invited to join the Biographers International Organisation. Locally, the book is available at outlets like Protea Books, Clarke’s Bookshop and The Book Lounge.

Research Associate Dr Matthew Shum’s Improvisations of Empire is the first extended critical, biographical and historiographical account of the varied career and capacities of Thomas Pringle, the journalist, editor, “Scottish Romantic poet, South African settler and London-based advocate for abolition” (Jason Rudy, University of Maryland). For scholars of South African literature, “Pringle has been a long-time icon of South African liberalism,” and this “new study presents a more complex figure caught up in the contradictions of empire by a career that comprised poetry, settler propaganda and abolitionism.” You can read more about Improvisations of Empire here.

Professor Leslie Swartz, of SU Psychology, successfully defended his PhD in English Studies in July, with Professors Shaun Viljoen and Louise Green as supervisors. His memoir How I Lost My Mother has been contracted for publication in 2021 by Wits University Press.

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Dr Wamuwi Mbao and Dr Riaan Oppelt both contributed to the fourth issue of herri, an interactive, inter-sensory platform that, according to editor and curator Aryan Kaganof, attempts to answer the question, ‘What does decolonisation look like in this age of hybridity?’ Dr Mbao wrote the essay, “Struggle Sounds” with audio clips and Dr Oppelt wrote the play, (Ultra) Lockdown, with original theme music.

In other news, Sarah Marecek’s documentary film Waking Stellenbosch, created as an Honours research project in the English Department at SU, has been selected for screening at the Encounters Film Festival from 20 to 30 August.

And to conclude, the SU library has secured e-copies of two departmental books: SU Professor Extraordinaire Stephanie Newell’s Histories of Dirt : Media and Urban Life in Colonial and Postcolonial Lagos, which colleagues and interested students can find at https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sun/detail.action?docID=5992924 and Moving Spaces: Creolisation and Mobility in Africa, the Atlantic and Indian Ocean, edited by Prof Shaun Viljoen, SU Research Associate Dr Fernando Rosa and Prof Marina Berthet (Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil):  http://search.ebscohost.com.ez.sun.ac.za/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=2266998&site=ehost-live&scope=site

Dryad Press (Dryad) is excited to announce the formal launch of a student internship programme first piloted in 2019. The initiative is a collaboration with Stellenbosch University’s (SU) English Department and offers a student from the department the opportunity to experience the multi-dimensional world of publishing, under the mentorship of Dryad’s founder, Michèle Betty. Dryad was established in 2016 as an independent literary press dedicated to contemporary South African poetry. It has published both new and established poets, among them award-winners Beverly Rycroft, Sally Ann Murray and Tony Ullyatt. Publisher Michèle Betty is also the editor of New Contrast: South African Literary Journal. The internship is an initiative encouraged under Sally Ann Murray’s leadership as Chair of the SU English Department; going forward, colleagues in the department will oversee the selection process of the intern by shortlisting candidates (ideally postgraduates enrolled for English Honours or Masters). Dryad Press will interview potential interns, one of whom will be selected for the 24-week internship programme. Applicants require strong writing skills and administrative potential, and an interest in local literary culture.

The recipient of the pilot internship in 2019 was SU English Honours student Caryn Leigh Oram. Caryn says that her “time as an intern provided the opportunity to gain invaluable knowledge and experience in the literary industry. Under Michèle’s guidance, I was able to refine my industry skills, learn the publishing process and, of course, read exceptional poetry. The internship programme is a brilliant opportunity.” The internship enabled so many reciprocal benefits that Caryn now serves as Dryad’s social media consultant, and the Dryad/SU PIP has been formalised as an annual occurrence.

The intern selected for 2020 is Sarah Uheida, who is currently completing her BA, majoring in English. She is a poet with several credits to her name, and an experimental memoirist whose work has garnered expressions of interest from publishers.

We congratulate Sarah on her appointment as the Dryad intern, and wish her a productive six month stint at Dryad, from June to December 2020.

Michèle Betty                                                                      Sally Ann Murray

New book by SU English Department Research Associate, Dr Matthew Shum

Improvisations of Empire is the first extended critical, biographical and historiographical account of the varied career and capacities of Thomas Pringle, the journalist, editor, “Scottish Romantic poet, South African settler and London-based advocate for abolition” (Jason Rudy, University of Maryland). For scholars of South African literature, “Pringle has been a long-time icon of South African liberalism,” and this “new study presents a more complex figure caught up in the contradictions of empire by a career that comprised poetry, settler propaganda and abolitionism. Equally in command of close reading and relocations that include Scotland, Cape Colony and mid-nineteenth-century London, Improvisations of Empire is a truly eye-opening study” (Jon Mee, University of York). Published by Anthem Press (New York), in its series Advances in African Cultural Studies, Shum’s volume “shows how a careful reading of a literary oeuvre can transform how we think about the legacies of the colonial era. It rescues Pringle from the realms of liberal mythmaking, casting new light on a historical period in which nation-building, class-consciousness, abolition, Christian evangelism and colonialism were deeply entangled” (Peter D. McDonald, University of Oxford). Improvisations of Empire “is likely to remain the definitive reading of Thomas Pringle for many years to come” (David Attwell, University of York).

With the permission of the Skotnes family, the front cover of the book features an image by Cecil Skotnes, from a series of large painted panels housed in the 1820 Settlers Monument in Makhanda (Grahamstown).

Author’s email: matthewshum68@gmail.com

Uhuru Phalafala

I have been teaching a course on Black Consciousness poetry in the universities for close to seven years and have been nagged by the silence and absence of women in that unfolding radical moment. For about five years now, every August, the month that in South Africa marks women’s month, an image of Minister Lindiwe Zulu from the 1980s circulates on social media. She looks away from the book in her hands to confront us with a direct gaze into the camera, with a Kalashnikov resting easily next to her hip. 

The image represents a battle fought with both ideological and military warfare; what the Cold War machine would have called soft power (culture) and hard power (artillery). That image of a female guerilla looks as provocative as it does organic: the people closest to the pain should be closest to power, driving and informing the contours and contents of a revolution. The country’s history dictated their constitution: black, hypermasculine, clandestine, and Molotov-wielding. The battle lines were drawn along racial lines exclusively. 

When the white oligarchy peddled fear in their white subjects through the image of swart gevaar what they conjured was not black women. But history absolves them today. Their variegated voices erased by national liberation narratives shall be heard. Black women were at the frontlines and in the underground confronted with a distinctive battle, against the white supremacist machine impaling their families and communities, and often against hetero-patriarchy within their ranks, which came to symbolise the notion of nation. To be a female guerrilla was to submit oneself to multiple warfares. They were in the trenches of Tanzania, Angola, and Mozambique as fighters, teachers, students, guerillas, and nurses.

Lindiwe Mabuza championed the Malibongwe book project. She drafted a letter to the head of the ANC’s women’s section, Florence Maphosho, to propose the idea. Mabuza asked Maphosho to disseminate the letter to all the women in the camps, offices of the ANC around the world, and at the nascent Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College (Somafco). There was great interest as hand-written submissions from all the camps began to arrive in Lusaka. Angela Dladla-Sangweni, Mabuza’s sister in law, helped to type all the poems. Mabuza had the full manuscript by the time she went to Sweden in 1979. At the time she was also at the helm of fundraising to construct the new Somafco, and had arranged for artists within the Angola camps to contribute drawings and illustrations which she could sell to advance that cause.

She sold the originals to several Scandinavian countries as she was ANC’s official representative to the entire Nordic region, but kept copies for inclusion in the first edition of Malibongwe’s English version. She approached then-secretary at the Center for International Solidarity in Sweden, Bjorn Andreasson, to help raise funds for the publication of the poetry anthology. While this was in the pipelines, the German translation became the first to be published by Munich-based Weltkreis-Verlag in 1980. Translated by Elizabeth Thompson and Peter Schütt, this edition was expedited by the ambassador of the ANC Mission for the Federal Republic of Germany and Austria, Tony Seedat, and wife, Dr. Aziza Seedat. They had already been in liaison with the publisher in 1980, who was at the time publishing another South African poetry collection by Keorapetse Kgositsile titled Herzspeuren/Heartprints (1980), at the behest of Aziza Seedat. 

In 1981 Bengt Save Soderbergh of the Centre for International Solidarity of the Labour Organization in Sweden had taken over oversee the full publication process, and published 2000 English language copies. Most copies were distributed by ANC officials around the world, at the discretion of the party’s chief representatives. At subsequent ANC meetings and rallies people were reading the women’s poetry. Meanwhile Soderberg approved funding for Erik Stinus to translate the anthology into Swedish and Danish, published in 1982 by the anti-apartheid solidarity group Mellemfolkeligt Samvirke. Later in the decade (date unknown) the Finnish Peace Committee had a smaller batch of the anthology translated into Finnish and published in Helsinki. The demand for Malibongwe’s German edition resulted in the second edition being reprinted in 1987, this time carrying five illustrations by ANC member and eminent abstract expressionist Dumile Feni, one emblazoned on the cover. This was inspired by the illustration and design of Kgositsile’s collection. We carry the spirit of collaboration in this edition through the awe inspiring Feni masterpiece. These networks of international solidarity and support attest to the power of culture in fostering strong political tools for revolution. 

Some of the poets in this anthology have used pseudonyms as they were underground. The following contributors have since passed on: Belinda Martins, Thuli Kubeka, Phumzile Zulu, and Mpho Segomotso Dombo. May their revolutionary souls rest in peace.

PhD coordinator: Associate Professor Tina Steiner:  tsteiner@sun.ac.za

Doctoral study in the English Department is possible in a range of topics in literary and cultural studies as well as in creative writing. The PhD requires committed, independent research and supervisors work closely with students during all stages of the study. The department provides structured support to students especially in the initial stages when the proposal is being crafted. To see our research expertise visit the staff profiles on our website https://www0.sun.ac.za/english/staff/. We have well-established research expertise in, for example: African literature, particularly South African and East African literary studies; studies in nineteenth century literature and its re-imaginings; cultural, oceanic and eco-critical studies; film studies and script writing; contemporary creative non-fiction and literary journalism; poetry; life writing; studies of trans-Atlantic black writing and networks, creative writing; translation studies; postcolonial literature and theory; queer literature and culture; English literature and pedagogy; and narrative theory.

The department offers two forms of the PhD:

1. A full-thesis PhD (English Studies)

An 80 000-word academic thesis.

2. A PhD (English Studies) with a focus on Creative Writing or Literary Translation

The PhD has two components: an original work of creative writing/ literary translation in a particular genre or mix of genres, and a reflexive, critical commentary that relates to the creative /translation work. The scope, form and weighting of each of the components is established in discussions between supervisor/s and student.

Entrance Requirements:

A minimum of 65% for the MA degree in English Studies or a cognate discipline is required. For the creative writing/translation PhD, additional evidence of achievement in the proposed field is needed. We prefer our students to be full-time residential students, where possible.

How to apply:

If you are interested in doing a PhD in the English Department at Stellenbosch University, you need to two things:

1. Send an email to the coordinator, giving us a brief outline of your intended topic, a paragraph on your MA research, and attach a copy of your CV and MA transcript. AND
2. Fill out an online application via central Administration: http://www.sun.ac.za/english/maties/apply/explore-your-options.

Incomplete applications will not be considered.

Funding:

The English Department unfortunately is not in a position to fund students for doctoral study.

Stellenbosch University administered bursaries are available to certain students, see the postgraduate office website: www.sun.ac.za/pgo/funding for more information. We would also like to take this opportunity to encourage all interested students to apply for funding from the National Research Foundation (www.nrf.ac.za) before the internal closing date(s) as advertised on the postgraduate office website.

Important links and resources

PhD proposal format:

http://www.sun.ac.za/english/faculty/arts/Documents/Research%20documents/PhD%20students/Formats%20of%20PhD%20dissertations.pdf

Faculty policy documents and forms (for higher degree students and supervisors):

http://www.sun.ac.za/english/faculty/arts/research/hdrc

Institutional research-related policy documents, including responsible research conduct and plagiarism:

http://www.sun.ac.za/english/research-innovation/Research-Development/policies-guidelines

Information relating to ethical clearance, meeting dates and online application:

http://www.sun.ac.za/english/research-innovation/Research-Development/integrity-ethics/human-research-(humanities)-ethics

Information relating to the submission of theses or dissertations on SUNScholar: http://library.sun.ac.za/en-za/Help/Pages/online-thesis-submission.aspx

This version 4 June 2020

Congratulations to Evan Maina Mwangi (PhD University of Nairobi), Professor of English and Director of Graduate Studies in the Comparative Literary Studies Program at Northwestern University, and Professor Extraordinaire in the English Department of Stellenbosch University. Kudos on the publication of his most recent monograph, The Postcolonial Animal: African Literature and Posthuman Ethics (Michigan, 2019). This volume examines the interface of critical animal studies and postcolonial literature to bring to the fore the vegan impulses in African writing. He demonstrates that these vegan motivations and affects are not a copy of western practices but draw from indigenous sources. His primary texts in this book include African folktales, religious texts, philosophical materials, and work by anti-colonial movements, as well as postcolonial and other literary sources which the authors have repurposed to call for the ethical treatment of non-human others and sexual minorities. By including work by East African writers such as Rebecca Nandwa, Nuruddin Farah, Henry ole Kulet, and Yuda Komora in its study of the figure of the animal in African literature, the book seeks to debunk the implied belief, in critical animal studies, that only white African writers (exemplified by J.M. Coetzee) have been attentive to the animal question. See more at https://www.press.umich.edu/9955521/postcolonial_animal

Congratulations to Prof Tina Steiner, to SU Prof Extraordinaire Evan Mwangi of Northwestern, and to other members of the editorial team on the publication by Wits University Press of DDT Jabavu’s travelogue In India and East Africa / E-Indiya nase East Africa, in isiXhosa and English. The book represents a long, even labyrinthine, journey for the editors, across institutions, languages, cultures, continents, mediating between the politics of the past and the claims of the present. In re-rendering Jabavu’s experiences and voice, it offers a very important and unusual contribution to the field.” (See the cover and info. Attached.)

In India and East Africa / E-Indiya nase East Africa
A travelogue in isiXhosa and English
D.D.T. Jabavu
Translated by Cecil Wele Manona
Edited by Tina Steiner, Mhlobo W. Jadezweni, Catherine Higgs and Evan M. Mwangi

A remarkable travelogue by one of South Africa’s greatest intellectuals, DDT Jabavu, this book opens new vistas on Indian Ocean histories. Available for the first time in isiXhosa and English, this historical gem enriches our sense of the scope and scale of South African letters.
—Isabel Hofmeyr, Global Distinguished Professor, New York University and Professor of African Literature, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

A significant figure in Cape African politics at that time, and a renowned academic from Fort Hare University, Jabavu’s expressive account of this trip weaves together a myriad of encounters with people he already knew, and those he would meet on his journey from the
Eastern Cape to India, via the East African coast. One can only marvel at how the editors have re-enlivened Jabavu’s account of his epic 1949 journey – a rousing read!
— Luvuyo Wotshela, Professor and Head of the National Heritage and Cultural Studies Centre, University of Fort Hare

In November 1949 D.D.T. Jabavu, the South African politician and professor of African languages at Fort Hare University, set out on a four-month trip to attend the World Pacifist Meeting in India. He wrote an isiXhosa account of his journey which was published in 1951 by Lovedale Press. This new edition republishes the travelogue in the original isiXhosa, with an English translation by the late anthropologist Cecil Wele Manona.
The travelogue contains reflections on Jabavu’s social interactions during his travels, and on the conference itself, where he considered what lessons Gandhian principles might yield for South Africans engaged in struggles for freedom and dignity. His commentary on non- violent resistance, and on the dangers of nationalism and racism, enriches the existing archive of intellectual exchanges between Africa and India from a black South African perspective.
The volume includes chapters by the editors that examine the networks of international solidarity – from post-independence India to the anti-colonial struggle in East Africa and the American civil rights movement – which Jabavu helped to strengthen, biographical sketches of Jabavu and of Manona, and an afterword that reflects on the historical and political significance of making African-language texts available to readers across Africa.

Publication support for this project was generously awarded by the AW Mellon Foundation as one of the initiatives of the Consortium of Critical Theory Programs and the Humanities and Social Science Research Grant from the University of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus.