Prof Tina Steiner (Chair)

Chair of the department

Professor, MA, PhD (UCT)   

Send e-mail
Tel:+2721 808 2043

TEACHING AREAS

African fiction; Translation studies; Postcolonial literature; Migration and Diaspora Studies; Eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean.

RESEARCH AREAS

An enduring interest in African literature has fundamentally shaped my professional research trajectory and I remain committed to exploring the way in which African cultural expression engages with and shapes its place in the world. I welcome topics for supervision in the following areas: African fiction; Translation studies; Postcolonial literature; Migration and Diaspora Studies; Eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean.

PUBLICATIONS 

BOOKS
  • Co-editor of Critical Perspectives on Abdulrazak Gurnah. London: Routledge, 2023. [SI to book]
  • Convivial Worlds. Writing Relation from Africa. Routledge, 2021.
  • Edited bilingual translation with introduction: In India and East Africa/E-Indiya Nase East Africa. A travelogue in isiXhosa and English. D.D.T. Jabavu. Eds. Tina Steiner, Mhlobo W. Jadezweni, Catherine Higgs and Evan Maina Mwangi. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2020.
  • Translated People, Translated Text: Language and Migration in Contemporary African Literature. Manchester: St Jerome, 2009.
EDITED Collections
  • Special Journal Issue on ‘War and Peace in Eastern African Narratives’. English in Africa, 2019, co-edited with Grace Musila.
  • Special Journal Issue on ‘Indian Ocean Trajectories’ Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies, 2018, Co-edited with Evan Mwangi.
  • Special Journal Issue on ‘Critical Perspectives on Abdulrazak Gurnah’ English Studies in Africa 56 (1), May 2013. Co-edited with Maria Olaussen.
BOOK CHAPTERS
  • ‘Temporalities of Proximity: Three Anecdotes’. Proximity as Method: Concepts for Coexistence in the Global Past and Present. Eds. Riccarda Flemmer, Bani Gill, Jacky Kosgei. Routledge, 2024.
  • ‘African Contrasts’: Noni Jabavu’s Travelogue as Kaleidoscope. For The Meaning of Abrahams, Jabavu, Nyembezi and Mphahlele Across a Century. Edited by Bhekizizwe Peterson, Makhosazana Xaba and Khwezi Mhkize. Wits University Press, 2022.
  • ‘Writing in the ‘Contact Zone’: The Problem of Post-Colonial Literary Translation. Reading Tsitsi Dangarembga’s novel Nervous Conditions in German’. Writing Back In/And Translation. Ed. Raoul Granqvist. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2006.
PEER-REVIEWED JOURNAL ARTICLES

  • ‘Euryclea’s Greeting: Literary and Linguistic Palimpsests in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Oeuvre’. PMLA, 138.2 (2023): pp. 398–405. Doi: 10.1632/S00308129230000238.
  • ‘The language of food: ingestion, expulsion and registers of repair in Alibhai-Brown’s The Settler’s Cookbook. Journal of the African Literature Association, Vol 16. 2022: . DOI: 10.1080/21674736.2022.2072258.
  • ‘Scheherazade’s Achievement(s): Practices of care in Fatema Mernissi’s memoir Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood and her creative non-fiction Scheherazade Goes West’. English in Africa, last issue of 2020. [Accredited journal]
  • ‘Ports as Portals’: D. D. T. Jabavu’s voyage to the World Pacifist Meeting in India. English Studies in Africa. Special Issue guest edited by Isabel Hofmeyr. 2019 [Accredited journal]
  • ‘Temporal Aftermaths in the African Metropolis: Cairo in the Crime Fiction of Parker Bilal’. English in Africa, 45 (3), 2018: 99-118. [Accredited journal]
  • The Stranger’s Gaze:  Defamiliarizing the Local in Hawa J. Golakai’s The Lazarus Effect and The Score in Jahrbuch für Internationale Germanistik 2017, eds.  Carlotta von Maltzan and Michaela Holdenried.
  • ‘A Vagabond on the Road: the pressure of genre in Nadifa Mohamed’s novel Black Mamba Boy” in African Studies, 2016, eds. Grace Musila and Dina Ligaga.
  • ‘Traversing Social Landscapes: Plaatje’s Mhudi and Community’ in English in Africa, Special Issue on Community, 2014. Ed. Dirk Klopper,
  • “Dwelling-in-Travel”: Of Ships, Trains and Planes in M.G. Vassanji’s Fiction’ in East African Literature and Culture (1.1), 2014. Eds. Gadwin Siundu &Tom Odhiambo.
  • ‘Writing on and over the edge of community: Sophia Mustafa’s In the Shadow of Kirinyaga‘ Kunapipi Vol.XXXIV, (1), 2013. Ed. Anne Collett. Associate Eds. Grace Musila &Maria Olaussen.
  • ‘The Indian Ocean travels of Sheikh Yusuf and Imam Ali Ali: literary representations in Ishtiyaq Shukri’s The Silent Minaret and Achmat Dangor’s Bitter Fruit‘ Social Dynamics (38.2), 2012. Eds. Gabeba Baderoon and Louise Green.
  • ‘Translating between India and Tanzania: Sophia Mustafa’s partial cosmopolitanism’ Research in African Literatures (42.3), 2011. Ed. Gaurav Desai.
  • ‘Writing “Wider Worlds”: The Role of Relation in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Fiction’ Research in African Literatures (41.3), 2010. Eds. Peter Mwikisa and Mary Lederer.
  • ‘Of cracked lenses: cultural translation, opacity and the African novel’ Social Dynamics (36.2), 2010. Eds. Harry Garuba, Cheryl-Ann Michael and Meg Samuelson.
  • ‘Navigating Multilingually: The chronotope of the ship in contemporary East African fiction’ English Studies in Africa (51.2), 2008. Ed Michael Titlestad.
  • ‘Strategic Nostalgia, Islam and Cultural Translation in Leila Aboulela’s Fiction’. Current Writing 20 (2), 2008. Ed. Duncan Brown.
  • ‘Of Translators, Travellers and Readers: The Transmission of Knowledge in Contexts of Power in Jamal Mahjoub’s The Carrier (1998)’. English Academy Review: Southern African Journal of English Studies 25 (1) 2008.
  • ‘Pockets of Connection against the Backdrop of ‘Culture Talk’ in Ishtiyaq Shukri’s The Silent Minaret’. Current Writing 19 (1) 2007.
  • ‘Mimicry or Translation? Storytelling and Migrant Identity in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s novels Admiring Silence and By the Sea‘. Special Edition of The Translator Ed. Loredana Polezzi. St. Jerome, 2006.
  • ‘The Pull Between Old and New Communities in M.G. Vassanji’s Novels of Migration’. Canadian Review of Comparative Literature. Special Issue on African Literature. Eds. Esonwanne, Garuba, Nai’Allah, 2005.
REVIEWS, DICTIONARY ENTRIES
  • Review of Charne Lavery’s “Writing Ocean Worlds. Indian Ocean Fiction in English”. Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies. Vol. 9, Issue 3, 2023.
  • ‘Review of Sol Plaatje. A Life of Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje. 1876-1932’ for English in Africa. 2019.
  • Biographical note and entry on Nadifa Mohamed’s Black Mamba Boy in German for KindLer-Literatur-Lexikon, 2019.
  • Entry on Abdulrazak Gurnah’s novel By The Sea in German for the KindLer-Literatur-Lexikon, 2018.
  • ‘Eastern Africa’ in • New Literatures Year’s Work in English Studies 97, 2018.
  • ‘Eastern Africa’ in • New Literatures Year’s Work in English Studies 96, 2017.
  • ‘Eastern Africa’ in • New Literatures Year’s Work in English Studies 95, 2016.
  • ‘Eastern Africa’ in Sally Carpentier, Mridula Nath Chakraborty, Margaret Daymond, Michael Griffiths, Philip Holden, Dougal McNeill, Grace Musila, Ira Raja, Giselle Rampaul, Paul Sharrad, Geraldine Skeete, Tina Steiner, and Ian Whitehouse XVIII • New Literatures Year’s Work in English Studies 94: 1099-1233, 2015.
  • Review of The Grammar of Identity. Safundi. 13 (3-4) 2012.
  • Review of Afropolitanism. Imbizo 3 (1) 2012.
  • Review of In Babel’s Shadow: Multilingual Literatures, Monolingual States. Translation Studies 5 (2), 2012: 259-262.
  • Review of Migrant Form. English Academy Review: Southern African Journal of English Studies 28 (2) 2011.
  • Review of A New Generation of African Writing. Language, Migration and Material Culture. English Academy Review: Southern African Journal of English Studies 25 (1) 2010.
  • Review of At Risk: Writing on and over the Edge of South Africa. English Academy Review: Southern African Journal of English Studies 25 (1) 2008.
  • Review of The Portable Bunyan: A Transnational History of The Pilgrims Progress. Social Dynamics 30 (1), 2004: 224-225.
  • Entry on ‘Leila Aboulela’. Dictionary of African Biography, Eds: Henry Louise Gates, Jr. and Emmanuel K. Akyeampong, 2011.
  • Entry on ‘Abdulrazak Gurnah’. Dictionary of African Biography, Eds: Henry Louise Gates, Jr. and Emmanuel K. Akyeampong, 2011.
  • Entry on ‘M.G. Vassanji’. Dictionary of African Biography, Eds: Henry Louise Gates, Jr. and Emmanuel K. Akyeampong, 2011

POSTGRADUATE SUPERVISION (completed)

MA

  • 2023: Seluliwe Mbingo. Thesis title: The Representation of Water in Selected Southern African Fiction
  • 2022: Lara Alhadeff (co-supervisor with Dr Lauren van der Rede): On Words and Wounds: Intergenerational Trauma and Identity in Selected Shoah and Apartheid Memoirs.
  • 2021: Ayanda Gasela. Thesis title: A Literary Analysis of the Politics of Space in the Post-apartheid Township.
  • 2020: Daniella Neville: Thesis title. Navigating the Grey Zone: East Asian South African Selves in Three Auto/Biographical Texts.
  • 2018: Christine van Deventer. Thesis title: The Representation of Egypt in Ahdaf Soueif’s The Map of Love. Distinction.
  • 2014: Nicole Eberhardt. Thesis title: ‘Narrating Alternative Histories: An Exploration of Jamal Mahjoub’s The Carrier and Amitav Ghosh’s In An Antique Land’.  Distinction.
  • 2013: Randi Rodgers. Thesis title: ‘Identity and Education in the Novels by Tsitsi Dangarembga and Kopano Mtlwa’
  • 2010: Adri Goosen. Thesis title: ‘Stealing the Story, Salvaging the She’: Feminist Revisionist Fiction and the Bible. Distinction.

PhD

  • 2023: Rose Lim. Thesis title: Precarious Unmoorings: Women’s Voices in the Anglo – and Lusophone Literature of Adichie, Chiziane and Mohamed (sole supervisor).
  • 2021: Hannah Schütz (based at Humboldt, Berlin). Thesis title: Geschichte/n im Übergang. Die Funktion von Geschichte in post-Apartheid crime fiction (external co-supervisor).
  • 2020: Jauquelyne Kosgei. Thesis title: Imaginaries of Oceanic Histories in Oral and Written Texts from the Kenyan Coast. (joint supervisor)
  • 2017: Mohammad Bandile Shabangu. Thesis title: ‘Globality: The Double Bind of African Migrant Writing’ (joint supervisor).
  • 2017: Serah Kasembeli. ‘The Ghost of Memory: Literary Representations of Slavery in Post-Apartheid South Africa’ (joint supervisor).
  • 2017: Adri Marais. Thesis title: ‘Ever Other: Unsettling Subjects in Contemporary Revisions of Fairy Tales’ (joint supervisor).
  • 2015: Phenyo Butale. Thesis title: ‘Discourses of Poverty: Assessing representations of indigence in post-colonial texts from Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe’ (joint supervisor).
  • 2014: Chantelle Gray Van Heerden. Thesis title: ‘Translation as/in Critique: Ingrid Winterbach’s oeuvre in Afrikaans and English’ (joint supervisor)
  • 2014: Kimani Kaigai. Thesis title: ‘Travelling to Strange Lands: Migrant Aesthetics in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Fiction’ (sole supervisor).
  • 2014: Danson Kahyana. Thesis title: ‘Negotiating (Trans)National Identities in Ugandan Literature’ (main supervisor).
  • 2013: James Ocita. Thesis title: ‘Diasporic Imaginaries: memory and negotiation of belonging in East African and South African Indian Narratives’ (co-supervisor).
  • 2013: Sydoine Moudouma Moudouma. Thesis title: ‘Intra-and Inter-Continental Migration in Contemporary African Literature’ (sole supervisor).