English Studies
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Eros and Self-Realization: Zora Neale Hurston’s Janie and Flora Nwapa’s Efuru
(The Pennsylvania State University, 2020)A comparative analysis of Zora Neale Hurston’s Teir Eyes Were Watching God and Flora Nwapa’s Efuru suggests the importance of romantic love to the self actualization of the heroines of these novels, whose authors share ... -
‘Foundational fictions’ Variations of the marriage plot in Flora Nwapa’s early Anglophone-Igbo novels
(Taylor & Francis, 2019)The Igbo marriage song recorded by Ifi Amadiume in her influential ethnographic study of the Nnobi in Southeastern Nigeria is a reminder of the cross-cultural, trans-historical significance of some form of marriage in the ... -
BECOMING-MINORITARIAN Constructions of coloured identities in creative writing projects at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa
(Taylor & Francis, 2020)The institutional history of the University of the Western Cape (UWC) in some ways mirrors the paradoxes, ambiguities, absurdities, contradictions and possibilities – in short, the complexities – of the concept “coloured”. ... -
Postnational paradoxes: Nuruddin Farah's recent novels and two life narratives in counterpoint
(Indiana University Press, 2018)Nuruddin Farah’s most recent novel, Hiding in Plain Sight, provides an interesting fictional terrain within which to explore postcolonial postnationalism. This novel highlights the impacts of globalization and transnationalism ... -
Dog sacrifice in Isidore Okpewho’s call me by my rightful name and the Works of Wole Soyinka: Ogun, race, identity and diaspora
(Ranchi: Glocal Colloquies, 2016)This essay considers the ways in which the significance of blood sacrifice in the propitiation of the Yoruba god Ogun is transformed in the context of international literature which asserts an endogenous African modernity, ... -
Her heart lies at the feet of the mother: Transformations of the romance plot in Leila Aboulela’s minaret
(University of Western Cape, 2021)Sudanese-British writer, Leila Aboulela’s novel, Minaret (2005) transforms the plot structure of Western literary and popular romance forms and develops further the plotlines of African-American Muslim romance novels. ... -
In the heart of the country: The auto/biographies of Ayesha Dawood and Fatima Meer
(University of Cape Town, 2020)South African struggle auto/biography has been a male-dominated genre in which the political has correspondingly dominated the personal. These life narratives have presented the formation of relatively coherent, autonomous ... -
Love in a State of Fear: Reflections on Intimate Relations in Nuruddin Farah's Dictatorship Novels
(Routledge, 2016)Romantic love, shot through with passion and the erotic, has extremely rarely been the focus of the study of African oral traditions or a theme considered in African literature criticism. This situation prevails despite ... -
Zimbabwean foodways, feminisms, and transforming nationalisms in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s nervous conditions and no violet bulawayo’s we need new names
(Brill Academic Publishers, 2016)Food studies are a productive lens through which to view the impact of social, cultural, historical and political shifts on conceptions of female identity. Nervous Conditions (1988) and we need new names (2013) are two ... -
Plotting marriage and love in Elechi Amadi's The concubine: Extended realism in the African novel.
(University of the Western Cape, 2019)Unlike most other 20th-century African writers, Elechi Amadi foregrounds the theme of romantic love in most of his fiction. Unlike the internationally canonized “village novels” of Chinua Achebe, Amadi’s “village novels” ... -
Knowledge and unlearning in the Poetry of Koleka Putuma and Sindiswa Busuku-Mathese
(Routledge, 2018)This paper provides a reading, through a decolonial lens, of the debut work of two recently published South African poets, Sindiswa Busuku-Mathese and Koleka Putuma. In the work of both poets, the reader encounters ... -
“Connecting Mind to Pen, to Eyes, to Face, to Arms and Legs”: Toward a Performative and Decolonial Teaching Practice
(Cambridge University Press, 2020)The push to sustain online learning platforms that have been established in the wake of Covid-19 at South African universities raises a number of concerns. Apart from highlighting the stark and ongoing social inequities ... -
Introduction: Reinscribing Nuruddin Farah in African literature
(Tydskrif vir Letterkunde Association, 2020)The commissioning of a theme issue on the work of Farah in a South African literary journal therefore is noteworthy both in African continental and world literature contexts. Commemorating Farah’s career in Tydskrif vir ... -
Disappeared to Ethiopia’s Bermuda: Tales by a puppet
(University of the Western Cape, 2018)At the Red Terror Martyrs' Memorial Museum (RTMMM) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, there sits upon a wall a chart of the torture houses used during a campaign of terror waged by the Derg regime that ruled Ethiopia from 1974 to ... -
Evaluation of assessment skills using essay rubrics in student self-grading at first year level in higher education: a case study
(South African Association for Language Teaching, 2018)This paper reports on a study in which students self-graded an assessment task with the aid of an assessment rubric. On comparing student selfgrades with those of the tutor it was found that majority (72.6%) of the students ... -
Reflecting on the process of teaching reflection in higher education
(Taylor and Francis, 2018)Higher education plays an important role in nurturing life-long learning and critical citizenry. One way to foster these is through developing a reflective practice. Given the importance of reflection, this article ... -
Attending to the affective: exploring first year students’ emotional experiences at university
(South African Journal of Higher Education, 2018)This study engaged students at the affective level in order to acquire a better understanding of their emotional experiences at university with the ultimate aim of improving teaching and learning. A qualitative research ... -
Representations of revolutionary violence in recent Indian and South African fiction
(Taylor & Francis, 2017)Several recent novels in English by Indian and South African authors explore the theme of violent political resistance to the entrenched injustices of the hierarchical Indian social order and South Africa’s institutionalised ... -
Travelling home: Diasporic dis-locations of space and place in Tendai Huchu's The Maestro, The Magistrate & The Mathematician
(SAGE Publications, 2018)The Maestro, The Magistrate & The Mathematician, a novel by Zimbabwean diasporic writer Tendai Huchu, adds to a growing body of global immigrant fiction. Huchu’s novel concerning Zimbabwean émigrés in the United Kingdom ... -
The polygynous household in Lola Shoneyin’s The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives: a haven in a heartless world
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017)Despite Lola Shoneyin’s public condemnation of the impediments to female autonomy, equality, freedom, dignity, and self-realisation inherent in polygamy, the polyvalent nature of her contemporary Nigerian novel, The Secret ...
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