Dr Wamuwi Mbao – English Department

South African literature; South African film studies; pop culture; philosophy of violence.

South African post-apartheid literature; literature and trauma; literary aporetics.

“The new black middle class in South Africa, by Roger Southall”, Safundi 18(1) 2017: 103-104.
“Testing Style: Imraan Coovadia’s Transformations and the Performance of Restless Wisdom”, Current Writing* 28(1), 2016: 88-95.
“Inscribing whiteness and staging belonging in contemporary autobiographies and life-writing forms”, English in Africa Special Issue: “Whiteness Studies: A South African Perspective”, Volume 37, 2010.

“Paw-Paw Politics: Lady Skollie and the Curating of Contradiction.” Paper read at UCKAR African Feminisms Conference, July 2017
“A House Where Nobody Lives: Reading South African Unsettledness Within a Realm of Distance .” Paper presented at the ACLALS conference 12 July 2016.
“Terror Terroir: ‘Problem Buildings’, Abandoned Spaces and the Aesthetics of the Sub/urban.” Paper presented at AUETSA, Grahamstown 2015.
Clean Nostalgia: Township Car Washes as Sites of Meaning.” Paper delivered at WISER seminar Curating the Afropolitan City: New Ethnographies of Johannesburg, 2014.
“Mandela’s Cressida: Sideways Reflections on Automotive Culture in South Africa.” Paper delivered at Stellenbosch University Research Seminar, May 2014.
“We Don’t Normally Do This Sort of Thing: Teju Cole’s ‘Small Fates’ and the future of (South?) African City Literature.” Paper delivered at UCT symposium on “South African Literatures: Land, Sea, City”, 2013.

“Thirty”, short story published in the Johannesburg Review of Books, 2017.
“The Bath”, short story published in various collections including Queer Africa and Recognition. Included in Twenty in 20, a collection of the twenty most significant South African short stories post-1994.

Dr Mbao is on the Editorial Advisory Panel of the Johannesburg Review of Books. He is also on the Board of Directors of the poetry journal New Contrast.
Dr Mbao writes literary reviews and other articles for the Johannesburg Review of Books. His articles and interviews have also appeared in the Sunday Times, Africa Is a Country, the Daily Maverick and other sites.