Department of English People
English Literary Studies
Head of Department
Qualifications: BA Hons (Oxon), MA (Sussex), MA with Distinction (East Anglia), PGCE (London), PhD (Lancaster)
Position: Associate Professor
Email: mvandermerwe@uwc.ac.za
Her research interests include: Creative Writing process and pedagogy; Prison writing, writing by contemporary conflict survivors, and increasingly, writings (and other narratives, including oral recording and vlogs) by and about itinerant communities in both South Africa and the U.K. These include: refugees; economic migrants (most notably Zimbabwean); the canal and river boat dwellers of the U.K (both current and historical) and the Romani Gypsy communities of contemporary Britain.
Meg’s fiction and academic research has been published in South Africa, the U.K, the U.S and in Asia. Her novels are currently taught in universities in South Africa and the U.S. She has been translated into Afrikaans, Vietnamese and her 2013 novel, Zebra Crossing, is currently being translated into Italian. The same novel was Long Listed for the 2014 Sunday Times Literary Award; selected by the Cape Times as one of the ten best South African books published in 2013; and also selected by Booker short-listed author Sunjeev Sahota for The Guardian newspaper in the U.K, as one of the Top 10 novels about migrants. The Afrikaans version of, The Woman of the Stone Sea (2019) was serialised on RSG radio.
Position: Associate Professor
Email: mvandermerwe@uwc.ac.za
Biography
Professor Meg Vandermerwe is a Creative Writing specialist with a focus on prose fiction. In 2009, she helped to launch UWC’s Creative Writing degree programme and its Creative Writing outreach programme, UWC CREATES.Her research interests include: Creative Writing process and pedagogy; Prison writing, writing by contemporary conflict survivors, and increasingly, writings (and other narratives, including oral recording and vlogs) by and about itinerant communities in both South Africa and the U.K. These include: refugees; economic migrants (most notably Zimbabwean); the canal and river boat dwellers of the U.K (both current and historical) and the Romani Gypsy communities of contemporary Britain.
Meg’s fiction and academic research has been published in South Africa, the U.K, the U.S and in Asia. Her novels are currently taught in universities in South Africa and the U.S. She has been translated into Afrikaans, Vietnamese and her 2013 novel, Zebra Crossing, is currently being translated into Italian. The same novel was Long Listed for the 2014 Sunday Times Literary Award; selected by the Cape Times as one of the ten best South African books published in 2013; and also selected by Booker short-listed author Sunjeev Sahota for The Guardian newspaper in the U.K, as one of the Top 10 novels about migrants. The Afrikaans version of, The Woman of the Stone Sea (2019) was serialised on RSG radio.
Selected publications
- 2019. ‘The Ink road: Walking the Writer’s Path’ Essay, Five Points Journal of Literature and Art, Georgia State University (Winter 2019 Volume 19 Number 1) pp.88-101
- 2019 – The Woman of the Stone Sea (Cape Town: Umuzi Penguin Random House)
- Die Vrou Van Die Klippesee (Cape Town: Umuzi Penguin Random House)
- 2018. ‘Imagining the “forbidden” Racial Other: Attitudes and Approaches in the works of Antjie Krog, Marlene Van Niekerk, Meg Vandermerwe and Zukiswa Wanner.’
- Accredited article,’ English in Africa (August 2018 Volume 45 Number 2) pp.83-106
- 2015. ‘Grace Paley’s Six Lies : A Practical Tool for Editing Creative Work’ Accredited article, Current Writing (Volume 27, Issue 2, October) pp.111-116
- 2014. Zebra Crossing (London, New York and Sydney: Oneworld Books)
- 2013. Zebra Crossing (Cape Town : Random House)
- 2013. ‘South Africa Welcomes the World: The 2010 World Cup, Xenophobia, and South Africa’s Ubuntu Dream.’ Essay in, eds. Peter Alegi and Chris Bolsmann, Africa’s World Cup: Critical Reflections on Play, Patriotism, Spectatorship, and Space (Michigan: University of Michigan Press) pp.200-209.
- 2012. ‘Exploring multiple viewpoints to create compelling narrative’ Two textbook exercises in, ed. Elaine Walker, Teaching Creative Writing: Practical Approaches (Cambridge: Professional and Higher Partnership Ltd) pp.142-144.
- 2010 - This Place I Call Home (Cape Town : Modjaji Books
Emeritus Professors
Qualifications: BA, M.Phil. (York), PhD. (Toronto)
Position: Emeritus Professor
Email: anthonyparr414@gmail.com
I have recently completed an edition of a play for the forthcoming Complete Works of John Marston, to be published by Oxford University Press. My current project is to write an essay for a volume on Historic House Museum Gardens and Parks (edited by D. Maior-Barron and E. Bosley) on the Owl House and Camel Yard in New Bethesda, and I am pursuing a number of research interests in the archives of the Huntington Library in California, where I am a full-time reader.
Position: Emeritus Professor
Email: anthonyparr414@gmail.com
Biography
My major areas of research are in theatre history and travel writing, with particular emphasis on the early modern period in England.I have recently completed an edition of a play for the forthcoming Complete Works of John Marston, to be published by Oxford University Press. My current project is to write an essay for a volume on Historic House Museum Gardens and Parks (edited by D. Maior-Barron and E. Bosley) on the Owl House and Camel Yard in New Bethesda, and I am pursuing a number of research interests in the archives of the Huntington Library in California, where I am a full-time reader.
Selected publications
- ‘“For his Travailes let the Globe witnesse”: Venturing on the Stage in Early Modern England’, in C. Jowitt & D. McInnis (eds) Travel and Drama in Early Modern England: The Journeying Play (Cambridge, 2018, 21-38).
- ‘A new piece of “Maloniana”?’, Notes & Queries 64 (March 2017), 72-4.
- Renaissance Mad Voyages: Experiments in Early Modern English Travel (Ashgate, 2015).
- ‘“Cut in more subtle angles”: history, historicisms, and the art of representation.’ Huntington Library Quarterly 78 (2015), 825-34.
- ‘The Caroline Globe’, The Yearbook of English Studies 44 (2014), 12-28.
- ‘“Going to Constantinople”: English wager-journeys to the Ottoman world in the early-modern period.’ Studies in Travel Writing 16 (2012), 1-13.
- ‘The wisdom of nature: ecological perspectives in King Lear’, in Andrew Hiscock & Lisa Hopkins (eds), King Lear: A critical guide (Continuum, 2011).
- ‘The English nation in Rome in the late sixteenth century’, Southern African Journal of Medieval & Renaissance Studies 18 (2008), 57-78.
- ‘John Donne, Travel Writer’, Huntington Library Quarterly 70 (2007), 61-85.
- Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004): articles on Anthony Nixon, George Wilkins, and John Day.
- ‘Inventions of Africa', in T'Kama-Adamastor: Re-envisioning the Colonial Discovery Narrative (Wits UP, 2000).
- Three Renaissance Travel Plays (Manchester, 1995; revised ed., 1999).
Qualifications: PhD (UCT), MA (Temple)
Position: Emeritus Professor
In the last five years she has had essays published on Patrice Nganang, Alain Mabanckou and various southern African writers in The Natures of Africa: Ecocriticism and Animal Studies in Contemporary Cultural Forms (2016); in Childhood and Pethood: New Perspectives in Childhood Studies and Animal Studies (2017); in Routledge Handbook of Ecocriticism and Environmental Communication (2019); in Palgrave Handbook of Animals and Literature (2020); and in Dogs in Southern African literatures: Tydskrif vir Letterkunde (2018).
She has also had poetry published in: New Contrast, Stanzas, McGregor Poetry Festival: Anthologies for 2016 and 2017, Illuminations: Special South African Issue, Coming Home: Poems of the Grahamstown Disapora, The Only Magic We Know: Selected Modjadji Poems.
Position: Emeritus Professor
Biography
Professor Wendy Woodward, whose research interests include Critical Plant Studies and Human-Animal Studies, co-edited A Special Issue on Critical Plant Studies: Journal of Literary Studies (2019) and Indigenous creatures, Native Knowledges, Animals and the Arts: Animal Studies in Modern Worlds (2017).In the last five years she has had essays published on Patrice Nganang, Alain Mabanckou and various southern African writers in The Natures of Africa: Ecocriticism and Animal Studies in Contemporary Cultural Forms (2016); in Childhood and Pethood: New Perspectives in Childhood Studies and Animal Studies (2017); in Routledge Handbook of Ecocriticism and Environmental Communication (2019); in Palgrave Handbook of Animals and Literature (2020); and in Dogs in Southern African literatures: Tydskrif vir Letterkunde (2018).
She has also had poetry published in: New Contrast, Stanzas, McGregor Poetry Festival: Anthologies for 2016 and 2017, Illuminations: Special South African Issue, Coming Home: Poems of the Grahamstown Disapora, The Only Magic We Know: Selected Modjadji Poems.
Extraordinary Professors
Qualifications: BA Hons (cum laude, UKZN), HED (UNISA), MA (cum laude, UCT), PhD (Texas)
Position: Extraordinary Professor
Email: david.attwell@icloud.com
His first academic appointment was at UWC, from 1981 to 1991 where, among other things, he taught African literature. He has a South African National Research Foundation (NRF) rating of A1. His research interests are in South African literature and literary history, with forays into literature from other parts of the African continent and the Commonwealth, as well as British literature of the Renaissance. He lives in Simon’s Town.
David Attwell has published three monographs, two on J.M. Coetzee (the first on the politics of writing, 1993, and the second a critical biography, 2015) and one on black literary history in South Africa (Rewriting Modernity, 2005/6). With Coetzee, he conducted a series of written interviews and co-edited Doubling the Point: Essays and Interviews (1992). He collaborated with Chabani Manganyi on a collection of the letters of Esk’ia Mphahlele (Bury Me at the Marketplace, 2010). With York colleague Derek Attridge, and with contributions from forty-four authors, he co-edited The Cambridge History of South African Literature (2012), a volume that calls for multilingual research into South Africa’s literary riches. His most recent book publication is a collaboration with colleagues at the University of Verona, Poetics and Politics of Shame in Postcolonial Literature (2019).
Position: Extraordinary Professor
Email: david.attwell@icloud.com
Biography
Professor David Attwell is an Extraordinary Professor of English at UWC, having returned to South Africa from the University of York in the UK where he was Professor of Modern Literature and Head of the Department of English and Related Literature.His first academic appointment was at UWC, from 1981 to 1991 where, among other things, he taught African literature. He has a South African National Research Foundation (NRF) rating of A1. His research interests are in South African literature and literary history, with forays into literature from other parts of the African continent and the Commonwealth, as well as British literature of the Renaissance. He lives in Simon’s Town.
David Attwell has published three monographs, two on J.M. Coetzee (the first on the politics of writing, 1993, and the second a critical biography, 2015) and one on black literary history in South Africa (Rewriting Modernity, 2005/6). With Coetzee, he conducted a series of written interviews and co-edited Doubling the Point: Essays and Interviews (1992). He collaborated with Chabani Manganyi on a collection of the letters of Esk’ia Mphahlele (Bury Me at the Marketplace, 2010). With York colleague Derek Attridge, and with contributions from forty-four authors, he co-edited The Cambridge History of South African Literature (2012), a volume that calls for multilingual research into South Africa’s literary riches. His most recent book publication is a collaboration with colleagues at the University of Verona, Poetics and Politics of Shame in Postcolonial Literature (2019).
Qualifications: MA (Stellenbosch); PhD (University of KwaZulu-Natal)
Position: Extraordinary Professor
Email: mflockemann@uwc.ac.za
She has also published extensively on contemporary South African theatre trends with a recent emphasis on the transformative and decolonial potentiality of affective performance aesthetics.
Her work has appeared in collections such as The Routledge Reader in Gender and Performance (1998) , The Routledge Reader in Post-coloniality and Performance (2000), and SA Lit Beyond 2000 (2011), Mobile Narratives: Travel, Migration and Transculturation. (2014) Performing Migrancy and Mobility in Africa (2015), New Directions in Diaspora Studies: Cultural and Literary Approaches (2018).
She has also published in journals such as Kunapipi, Ariel, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, International Journal of Learning, Journal of Literary Studies, Pretexts, English Academy Review, English in Africa, South African Theatre Journal, Journal for Theatre and Drama, Contemporary Theatre Review, AlterNation, English Studies in Africa, The International Journal for Critical Diversity Studies and Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Enquiry
Position: Extraordinary Professor
Email: mflockemann@uwc.ac.za
Biography
Professor Miki Flockemann publications include comparative studies of diasporic writings from South Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean with an emphasis on transitional aesthetics.She has also published extensively on contemporary South African theatre trends with a recent emphasis on the transformative and decolonial potentiality of affective performance aesthetics.
Her work has appeared in collections such as The Routledge Reader in Gender and Performance (1998) , The Routledge Reader in Post-coloniality and Performance (2000), and SA Lit Beyond 2000 (2011), Mobile Narratives: Travel, Migration and Transculturation. (2014) Performing Migrancy and Mobility in Africa (2015), New Directions in Diaspora Studies: Cultural and Literary Approaches (2018).
She has also published in journals such as Kunapipi, Ariel, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, International Journal of Learning, Journal of Literary Studies, Pretexts, English Academy Review, English in Africa, South African Theatre Journal, Journal for Theatre and Drama, Contemporary Theatre Review, AlterNation, English Studies in Africa, The International Journal for Critical Diversity Studies and Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Enquiry
Qualifications: PhD, BA hons, Cert Ed
Position: Extraordinary Professor (UWC), Professor Emeritus (Lancaster University, UK)
Email: graham.mort@lancaster.ac.uk
Position: Extraordinary Professor (UWC), Professor Emeritus (Lancaster University, UK)
Email: graham.mort@lancaster.ac.uk
Biography
A former freelance writer, Professor Graham Mort has worked as a poetry specialist, educational writer, editor, and tutor in a wide range of settings throughout the UK and overseas. Formerly Director of Studies for the Open College of the Arts, he is a distance learning and eLearning specialist. He has designed eLearning for the MA and PhD Creative Writing programmes at Lancaster University and directed the PhD programme, the distance learning MA and the MA by independent project. He was director of the British Council Crossing Borders and Radiophonics projects in sub-Saharan Africa (2001-2010). Graham has served as a member of the AHRC Peer Review College (2010-14) and was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship in 2015 in recognition for individual excellence and his work in building international learning communities. In 2017 he was awarded a Leverhulme International Fellowship for Taking Liberties, creative writing led research exploring ideals of liberty in South Africa. His research interests include contemporary fiction and poetry, eLearning, literature development project design, emergent African writing and narratives of diaspora. Graham achieved emeritus status at Lancaster University in September 2021 and is currently working on a new collection of poems.Selected publications
Poetry- A Country on Fire (Littlewood Press, 1986)
- A Halifax Cider Jar (Yorkshire Art Circus 1987)
- Into the Ashes (Littlewood Press, 1988)
- Sky Burial (Dangaroo Press, ( 1989)
- Snow from the North (Dangaroo Press, 1992)
- Circular Breathing (Dangaroo Press, 1997)
- A Night on the Lash (Seren, 2004)
- Visibility: New and Selected Poems (Seren, 2007)
- Cusp (Seren, 2011)
- Black Shiver Moss (Seren, 2017)
- Touch (Seren, 2010)
- Terroir (Seren, 2015)
- Like Fado and Other Stories (Salt 2021)
Qualifications: BA Hons MA (Rhodes), MPhil DPhil (Oxford)
Position: Extraodinary Professor
Email: Andrew.vandervlies@adelaide.edu.au
Books include monographs and edited and co-edited volumes on print culture and national literary historiography, and on cultural engagements with the discontents of political transition.
He has published articles and chapters on South African literature, visual culture, gender studies, and print culture, all of which he continues to research actively.
He is currently co-editing the Bloomsbury Handbook to J.M. Coetzee and a collection on Olive Schreiner’s literary influences and afterlives, and producing a scholarly edition of Schreiner’s The Story of an African Farm for Edinburgh University Press.
Position: Extraodinary Professor
Email: Andrew.vandervlies@adelaide.edu.au
Biography
Professor Andrew van der Vlies is a Professor in the Department of English and Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide, and Extraordinary Professor at the University of the Western Cape.Books include monographs and edited and co-edited volumes on print culture and national literary historiography, and on cultural engagements with the discontents of political transition.
He has published articles and chapters on South African literature, visual culture, gender studies, and print culture, all of which he continues to research actively.
He is currently co-editing the Bloomsbury Handbook to J.M. Coetzee and a collection on Olive Schreiner’s literary influences and afterlives, and producing a scholarly edition of Schreiner’s The Story of an African Farm for Edinburgh University Press.
Selected publications
- ‘Writing, politics, position: Coetzee and Gordimer in the archive’. In J.M. Coetzee and the Archive: Fiction, Theory, and Autobiography. Ed. Marc Farrant, Kai Easton, and Hermann Wittenberg. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. 59-75
- ‘World literature, the opaque archive, and the untranslatable: J. M. Coetzee and some others’, Journal of Commonwealth Literature. Published online 24 Feb. 2021, forthcoming in print.
- ‘Publics and Personas’. In The Cambridge Companion to J.M. Coetzee. Ed. Jarad Zimbler. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. 234-48.
- (Ed.) South African Writing in Transition (with Rita Barnard). London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019.
- (Ed.) Race, Nation, and Translation: South African Essays, 1989-2013, by Zoë Wicomb. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, and Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2018.
- Present Imperfect: Contemporary South African Writing. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
- ‘“MêME DYING STOP CONFIRM ARRIVAL STOP”: Provincial Literatures in Global Time: The Case of Marlene van Niekerk’s Agaat’. In Institutions of World Literature: Writing, Translation, Markets. Ed. Pieter Vermeulen and Stefan Helgesson. London & New York: Routledge, 2015. 191-208. (Ed.) Print, Text, & Book Cultures in South Africa. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2012.
- ‘South Africa in the Global Imaginary’. In The Cambridge History of South African Literature. Ed. Derek Attridge and David Attwell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. 697-716.
- South African Textual Cultures. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007.
Academic Staff
Qualifications: BA Hons (UKZN), MA (UCT), DLitt (UWC)
Position: Professor
Email: jmartin@uwc.ac.za
Position: Professor
Email: jmartin@uwc.ac.za
Biography
Professor Julia Martin has worked for some years in the field of the environmental humanities, with a special focus on the work of Gary Snyder, and a concern with exploring creative models for environmental pedagogy in literary studies. She is also particularly interested in using the genre of literary non-fiction to experiment with extending the modes of academic discourse. She is currently writing a book about sponge-diving in the Aegean.Selected publications
- 2021. ‘Salmon Waters.’ Forthcoming Current Writing 33.2. Special Issue in Honour of Michael Wessels.
- 2019. The Blackridge House: A Memoir. Cape Town: Jonathan Ball.
- 2019. 'Imagination and the Eco-social Crisis (Or: Why I Write Creative Non-Fiction).' Green Matters: Ecocultural Functions of Literature, ed. Maria Löschnigg and Melanie Braunecker. Leiden and Boston: Brill Rodopi. Brill Book Series: Nature, Culture & Literature, 219-233.
- 2017. 'The Path Which Goes Beyond: Danger on Peaks Responds to Suffering.' ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes, and Reviews 30 (2): 81-87.
- 2015. ‘The Temple and the Trees’. Current Writing 27.1: 61-77.
- 2015. ‘Minute Particulars and Global Flows: Place and interconnectedness in a creative nonfiction class.’ Current Writing, 27. 2: 117-123.
- 2014. Nobody Home: Writing, Buddhism, and Living in Places. San Antonio: Trinity University Press. Co-authored with Gary Snyder.
- 2011. ‘An Open Space’. Eds P. Lalu & N. Murray. Becoming UWC: Reflections, Pathways, and Unmaking Apartheid’s Legacy. Bellville: University of the Western Cape, 26-35.
- 2008. A Millimetre of Dust: Visiting Ancestral Sites. Cape Town: Kwela Books.
- 2003. ‘This is where I am coming from: Gangsters, Thatched Roofs and Cheese Boys in an Undergraduate Classroom’. The English Academy Review, 20: 98-114.
Qualification: PhD (University of Cape Town)
Position: Associate Professor
Email: fmoolla@uwc.ac.za
Her academic publications include the following selected journal articles: “In the heart of the country: the auto/biographies of Ayesha Dawood and Fatima Meer,” Social Dynamics. 46.1 (2020); “Eros and Self-Realization: Zora Neale Hurston’s Janie and Flora Nwapa’s Efuru,” Langston Hughes Review, Vol. 26, no. 1, (2020); “Plotting Marriage and Love in Elechi Amadi’s The Concubine: Extended Realism in the African Novel,” Postcolonial Text 14.1 (2019); “The Polygynous Household in Lola Shoneyin’s The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives: A Haven in a Heartless World.” ARIEL - A Review of International English Literature” 48.1 (2017); “Romance as Epistemological Aesthetic in the Fiction of Ahdaf Soueif” African Literature Today 35 (2017); “Love in a State of Fear: Reflections on Intimate Relations in Nuruddin Farah’s Dictatorship Novels,” Journal of the African Literature Association. 10.1 (2016).
Fiona Moolla has also guest edited a special issue of Tydskrif vir Letterkunde,"Literary provocations: Nuruddin Farah five decades on." Vol 57 No 1 (2020), and co-edited a special Issue of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 35.3 (2020), “The Textualities of the Auto/biogrAfrical,” with Sally Ann Murray and Tilla Slabbert.
She is the editor of Natures of Africa: Ecocriticism and Animal Studies in Contemporary Cultural Forms (2016) and the author of Reading Nuruddin Farah: The Individual, the Novel and the Idea of Home (2014). She has, in addition, authored entries in the following reference works: The Literary Encyclopaedia and Oxford Bibliographies Online.
Position: Associate Professor
Email: fmoolla@uwc.ac.za
Biography
Professor F. Fiona Moolla is an NRF-rated specialist in African literature, concentrating on the novel in Africa. Her current research focuses on the cultural history of romantic love in Africa. She would be interested in supervising HONS, MA and PhD students in this broad area, across a range of genres.Her academic publications include the following selected journal articles: “In the heart of the country: the auto/biographies of Ayesha Dawood and Fatima Meer,” Social Dynamics. 46.1 (2020); “Eros and Self-Realization: Zora Neale Hurston’s Janie and Flora Nwapa’s Efuru,” Langston Hughes Review, Vol. 26, no. 1, (2020); “Plotting Marriage and Love in Elechi Amadi’s The Concubine: Extended Realism in the African Novel,” Postcolonial Text 14.1 (2019); “The Polygynous Household in Lola Shoneyin’s The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives: A Haven in a Heartless World.” ARIEL - A Review of International English Literature” 48.1 (2017); “Romance as Epistemological Aesthetic in the Fiction of Ahdaf Soueif” African Literature Today 35 (2017); “Love in a State of Fear: Reflections on Intimate Relations in Nuruddin Farah’s Dictatorship Novels,” Journal of the African Literature Association. 10.1 (2016).
Fiona Moolla has also guest edited a special issue of Tydskrif vir Letterkunde,"Literary provocations: Nuruddin Farah five decades on." Vol 57 No 1 (2020), and co-edited a special Issue of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 35.3 (2020), “The Textualities of the Auto/biogrAfrical,” with Sally Ann Murray and Tilla Slabbert.
She is the editor of Natures of Africa: Ecocriticism and Animal Studies in Contemporary Cultural Forms (2016) and the author of Reading Nuruddin Farah: The Individual, the Novel and the Idea of Home (2014). She has, in addition, authored entries in the following reference works: The Literary Encyclopaedia and Oxford Bibliographies Online.
Qualifications: BA, BA Hons (Stellenbosch), HDE (UCT), MA and D.Litt (UWC)
Position: Professor
Email: hwittenberg@uwc.ac.za
Position: Professor
Email: hwittenberg@uwc.ac.za
Biography
Hermann Wittenberg has worked in the English Department at UWC since 1994, teaching and publishing in a wide area of literary studies. His research focuses mainly on South African literature, and he has published several archival studies on the Khoi narratives of the Cape, and on the work of J.M. Coetzee and Alan Paton. His edited books include Paton’s Lost City of the Kalahari travelogue (2005) and J.M. Coetzee’s Two Screenplays (2014). He has strong interests in the intersection of literature, film and photography, and co-curated the award-winning J.M. Coetzee: Photographs from Boyhood exhibition in the UK, South Africa and Australia (2017–20). A photobook of the same title was published under his editorship in 2020, followed up by a co-edited book, J.M. Coetzee and the Archive: Fiction, Theory, and Autobiography (2021). The book is the first full-length collection of essays that explore the numerous archival questions raised by Coetzee’s authorship. Wittenberg holds an NRF C1 rating, and has been the recipient of a Harry Ransom Fellowship at the University of Texas, a Newton Advanced research grant by the British Academy, and an Erasmus Mundus fellowship by the European Union.Qualifications: BA Hons, University of the Witwatersrand; DPhil, University of York, UK
Position: Department Chair
Email: cclarkson@uwc.ac.za
Before coming to UWC, she was Professor and Chair of Modern English Literature at the University of Amsterdam, and she retains a research affiliation with the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis. Recent publications include an introduction for an artist’s book by Willem Boshoff: the Oh No! Dictionary, and a chapter on the aesthetics of transitional justice in The Oxford Handbook of Transitional Justice. Her current research includes questions of environmental concern, with three essays on Zoë Wicomb (in the journals New Contrast; Angles; and Interventions) and a forthcoming chapter on J.M. Coetzee in The Cambridge Companion to Modern South African Literature
Position: Department Chair
Email: cclarkson@uwc.ac.za
Biography
Professor Carrol Clarkson has interdisciplinary teaching and research interests in literature, philosophy, linguistics, and the visual arts. She has published widely in these fields, with special reference to South African literary contexts. Her books include J.M. Coetzee: Countervoices (2009; second edition, 2013) and Drawing the Line: Toward an Aesthetics of Transitional Justice (2014).Before coming to UWC, she was Professor and Chair of Modern English Literature at the University of Amsterdam, and she retains a research affiliation with the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis. Recent publications include an introduction for an artist’s book by Willem Boshoff: the Oh No! Dictionary, and a chapter on the aesthetics of transitional justice in The Oxford Handbook of Transitional Justice. Her current research includes questions of environmental concern, with three essays on Zoë Wicomb (in the journals New Contrast; Angles; and Interventions) and a forthcoming chapter on J.M. Coetzee in The Cambridge Companion to Modern South African Literature
Selected Publications
- “Rereading the Bush at the University of the Western Cape.” Interventions. Special Issue, Plant Lives: Critical Plant Humanities—Conversations from the Global South, guest edited by Isabel Hofmeyr and Sarah Nuttall (in press, 2026).
- “The Colour Bar and the Rainbow Nation: Chromatic Thinking in South Africa. Angles. Special Issue Materialities of Shame: Bodies, Objects, Artworks,. Guest edited by Alexandra Poulain (in press, 2026).
- “Proteas, Roses, and Namaqualand Daisies: Remembering Zoë Wicomb.” New Contrast. Volume 53, Issue 211 (2026): 90-97.
- Re-reading Dusklands” co-written with Hermann Wittenberg, in English in Africa. Volume 52, numbers 1 & 2, (August 2025): 7-32.
- “The Aesthetics of Transitional Justice.” In The Oxford Handbook of Transitional Justice, edited by Jens Meierhenrich, Alexander Laban Hinton, and Lawrence Douglas. Oxford University Press, 2025: 629-647. Oxford University Press, 2025. ISBN 978-0-19870435-5. An online version was published in 2023: https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198704355.013.42
- “The King’s English and the Mother Tongue.” Handbook of Anglophone World Literatures, eds. Stefan Helgesson, Birgit Neumann, and Gabriele Rippl. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020: 53-66.
- “Academic Freedom Academic Obligation” in Law, Obligation, Community, eds. Scott Veitch and Daniel Matthews, Abingdon: Routledge, 2018. ISBN 9781138300408.
- “Inner Worlds.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language, guest edited by Anthony Uhlmann. Vol. 58.4 (Winter 2016): 424-436.
- “Wisselbare Woorde: J.M. Coetzee and Postcolonial Philosophy.” In Beyond the Ancient Quarrel: Literature, Philosophy, and J.M. Coetzee. Eds. Patrick Hayes and Jan Wilm. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017, 199-214. ISBN 0198805284.
- Drawing the Line: Toward an Aesthetics of Transitional Justice: New York: Fordham University Press, 2014.
- Review essay of John Kannemeyer’s J.M. Coetzee: ‘n Geskryfde Lewe and J.M. Coetzee: A Life in Writing, trans. Michiel Heyns. Life Writing. Vol. 11 no. 2 (2014); published online 30 January 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14484528.2014.87806.
- J.M. Coetzee: Countervoices. Houndmills and New York: Palgrave 2009; 2nd edition 2013. First edition ISBN-10: 0230221564; Second Edition, paperback, 2013.
- “Dickens and the Cratylus.” The British Journal of Aesthetics. vol. 39 no. 1 (January 1999): 53-61. ISSN 0007-0904.
Qualifications: BA Hons. (Cum Laude), MA, PhD (University of the Western Cape).
Position: Senior Lecturer
Email: mespin@uwc.ac.za
Position: Senior Lecturer
Email: mespin@uwc.ac.za
Biography
Mark Espin’s post-graduate research examined the work of Michael Ondaatje and John Berger, respectively. He has specific interests in poetry in English from all periods and regions of the world, in 19th-century and contemporary fiction and in the South African literary archive.Selected publications
Accredited (ORCID: 0000-0002-8504-4912)- “‘The Quickening Virtue’: Reiterating the Work of the Literary Text”. Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, 8 (3) September 2021, 345-359. https://doi.org/10.1017/pli.2021.16
- “The ‘Staffrider’ figure and the Reading of South African Poetry”. English in Africa, Volume 48, Issue 2, August 2021, 23-42. https://doi.org/10.4314/eia.v48i2.2
- “The Wretched and the Redemptive in John Berger’s Late Fiction”. English Academy Review, Volume 38, June/July 2021, Issue 1. https://doi.org/10.1080/10131752.2021.1934980
- “Dedicated to Making Things: Donald Parenzee”: Occasional Essay commemorating the death of a South African poet, May 2022 edition. https://johannesburgreviewofbooks.com/2022/05/02/donald-parenze
- Four poems – Johannesburg Review of Books, October 2021 edition. https://johannesburgreviewofbooks.com/2021/10/15/four-new-poems-by-mark-espin/
- “To Ignite Memories”. District Six Museum: Looking back on 25 years. Cape Town: District Six Museum, 2021, 34.
- April in Blank Verse. Cape Town: self-published pamphlet of poems, 2021.
Qualifications: PhD in Sociolinguistics (UWC); Med, in ESL (Rhodes Univ.); B.Ed. (UCT); BA (Unisa); STD (Dr. WB Rubusana College of Education)
Position: Senior Lecturer
Email: sntete@uwc.ac.za
Position: Senior Lecturer
Email: sntete@uwc.ac.za
Biography
Dr Susan Ntete teaches a communication skills course which is informed by the concept of Academic Literacies, and would consider supervising research relating to these literacies. Her recently published novel titled Ain’t Over Till It’s Ova has won her the Young Writers’ Award. She wrote the novel with Grades 11 and 12 learners in mind and plans to use it as a tool to smoothen high school learners’ transition into Higher Education. Towards this end she has designed a Teacher Guide on which she hopes to base her future collaboration with high school teachers.Selected publications
- Ntete, S. 2019. ‘Ain’t Over Till It’s Ova’ - A novel. Cape Town, National Library of South Africa.
- Ntete, S. 2010. Making the short story long: An Approach to Meeting the Needs of Low-Level University Students in South Africa. The paper was presented at the Khartoum-based (Sudan) English Language Teaching (ELT) conference as part of an edited volume of conference proceedings.
- Ntete, S. 2008. Transcending Disadvantage: Life-histories of learners at a Township School in South Africa. Lambert Academic Publishers: Saarbrucken, Germany.
- Ntete, S. 2001. ‘The case of Unathi: A South African ESL learner who excels at writing in English’, Per Linguam, Vol. 17(2):37-46.
Qualifications: National Senior Certificate, Cornerstone College; National Diploma in Drama, BTech. Drama, MTech Drama (Tshwane University of Technology).
Position: Lecturer
Email: kchale@uwc.ac.za
Position: Lecturer
Email: kchale@uwc.ac.za
Biography
Dr Katlego Chale’s teaching and research interests include post-apartheid South African theatre, theatre artists as public intellectuals, dramaturgy in collaborative theatre and intersections between academic practice and community-based theatre initiatives. He is interested in supervising students in these subjects, as well as projects on theatre in general. Katlego has been practising in the theatre industry as an actor, writer, organizer and dramaturge since 2012. He has recently performed on the main stages of The Market Theatre and The Joburg Theatre, and has produced several independent theatre projects with a focus on satire and social commentary such as Apple Soup (2013), The Torture (2018), and STAINS (2018). Recently, he has shifted to re-reading African classical texts and reimagining them as theatre productions, and to this end has written Nso Ani: The Trial of Okonkwo, which is in process towards eventual production in collaboration with influential company Theatre Duo, and the Germany based, iwalewabooks. Katlego is also the founder of The Writers’ Lab, an NPO that specializes in creating simulated workplace experiences for aspirant writers through the provision of practice-based skills-share environments facilitated by practicing industry professionals. Selected publications Peer-reviewed Research The Public Intellectualism of Artivist Mandisi Sindo in Public Intellectualism in South Africa: Critical Voices from the Past (Wits University Press, 2021) Ubulution! A re-imagining of protest and the public sphere in contemporary theatre in Theatre in Transformation: Artistic Processes and Cultural Policy in South Africa (transcript, 2019) Introduction in Between the Pillar and the Post: A multilingual anthology of contemporary South African monologues and scenes (diartskonageng, 2019)Qualifications: BA UWC (Cum Laude), BA Hons UWC (Cum Laude), Masters UWC (Cum Laude), PhD Stellenbosch University
Position: Lecturer
Email: codavids@uwc.ac.za
Position: Lecturer
Email: codavids@uwc.ac.za
Biography
Courtney L. Davids’ teaching and research interests include 18th and 19th century literature, Gothic, Modernism and South African literature exploring intersections between the home, identity, place. She sits on Education Boards, is a freelance editor, and director of a non-profit organization.Recent publications
Accredited (ORCID: 0009-0008-1361-6425)- “Unbound but Bound: Transgressive Love in Olive Schreiner’s Undine and The Story of an African Farm” The Routledge History of Love in World Literature and Culture, Routledge, July 2026.
- “Marriage Law and its Discontents: Catherine Hubback’s The Wife’s Sister; or The Forbidden Marriage.” The Journal of Victorian Culture, Oxford University Press, September 2026, Vol 32, pp 2-28.
- “Haunting from the Margins: Reading the Self in Place and Place in Self in Wolf Kibel’s South African Art” Porównania (Comparisons) Journal, July 2026, Vol 39, pp 1-13
- “Haunting Colonialism, Place and Identity: The Gothic in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s ‘The Brown Hand’” Academia Letters, 2021. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1739
- “Robots” Calabash, Vol 2, June 2021.
Qualifications: BA, MA Cum Laude (University of the Western Cape)
Position: Lecturer
Email: nmpuma@uwc.ac.za
Position: Lecturer
Email: nmpuma@uwc.ac.za
Biography
Nondwe Mpuma’s current research focuses on black South African women poets’ work between 2000-2021. Her research interests include creative writing pedagogies, writing about writing, speculative fiction and contemporary South African writing. She is interested in supervising projects in these fields, as well as projects that deal with slavery and themes of alienation and otherhood. Nondwe is currently working on her PhD.Selected publications
- Peach Country. Durban: uHlanga Press, 2022.
- “Dues,” “Taking into Account.” Stanzas. Edited by Douglas Reid Skinner and Patricia Schonstein, Number 15, South African Literary Journal NPC, March 2020, pp 11-12.
- “Writing and Editing 'Home': A Reflection." Multilingual Margins, Edited by Christopher Stroud and Quentin Williams, Vol. 6 no. 1, Centre for Multilingualism and Diversities Research, University of the Western Cape, 2019, pp. 22-24.
- “Loads.” Five Points: A Journal of Literature and Art [Special Edition: Writing from South Africa’s Creative Writing Programs], Edited by David Bottoms and Megan Sexton, Vol. 19 no. 1, Georgia State University, 2018, pp. 115.
Qualifications: BA Hons (UCT); MA with Distinction (Leeds); PhD (UCT)
Position: Lecturer
Email: knaicker@uwc.ac.za
She would be interested in supervising projects in these fields, as well as those dealing with representations of postcolonial violence, the themes of home and return, magical realism and crime fiction.
Her book, ‘Return to the Scene of the Crime: the returnee detective and postcolonial crime fiction’ was released by UKZN Press in 2021.
Position: Lecturer
Email: knaicker@uwc.ac.za
Biography
Kamil Naicker is primarily interested in postcolonial literature, genre fiction and global modernisms.She would be interested in supervising projects in these fields, as well as those dealing with representations of postcolonial violence, the themes of home and return, magical realism and crime fiction.
Her book, ‘Return to the Scene of the Crime: the returnee detective and postcolonial crime fiction’ was released by UKZN Press in 2021.
Selected publications
- “Variations on the Theme of Return: Homecoming and Nuruddin Farah” Tydskrif vir Letterkunde: A Journal for African Literature. 57.1 2020
- “The Liberator”, Trade Secrets: Short Sharp Stories Anthology, Ed. Joanne Hichens. Cape Town: Tattoo Press 2017
- “Going to Pieces: Narrative Disintegration in Nuruddin Farah’s Crossbones” Social Dynamics: A Journal of African Studies 43.2 2017
- “Topographies of Trauma in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland”, Women and Water in Global Fiction: Feminisms and Gender Eds. Elizabeth Jones and Emma Staniland. Routledge 2021. (forthcoming).
Qualifications: BA (Hons) MA UCT, PhD (Cantab.)
Position: Lecturer
Office: Room D220, Arts Building
Email: omelvill@uwc.ac.za
He works primarily on the relationship between literature and education with a particular interest in the writing of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Maria Edgeworth, Mary Hays, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. He also teaches and works on questions of place and belonging in contemporary South African literature with a focus on the work of Karen Jennings, CA Davids and Nadia Davids.
Position: Lecturer
Office: Room D220, Arts Building
Email: omelvill@uwc.ac.za
Biography
Oliver Melvill is a lecturer in the Department of English Literature. He holds a PhD in Eighteenth Century and Romantic Literature from the University of Cambridge. Before working in the English Department at UWC he held postdoctoral positions at the University of Cape Town and at the Centre for Multilingualism and Diversities Research as a part of the AW Mellon “Rethinking South African Literature(s)” project at UWC.He works primarily on the relationship between literature and education with a particular interest in the writing of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Maria Edgeworth, Mary Hays, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. He also teaches and works on questions of place and belonging in contemporary South African literature with a focus on the work of Karen Jennings, CA Davids and Nadia Davids.
Research Interests
- Eighteenth Century and Romantic literatures
- Pedagogic philosophy and the novel in the late Eighteenth Century
- Eighteenth Century children’s literature
- Literature and education
- Place and belonging in contemporary South African literature
- Creative writing (prose and scriptwriting)
Recent Publications
- Melvill, O., “Networks and Dissenting Circles”, in The Cambridge History of Children’s Literature in English: Origins to 1830, Vol. I, ed. Eugene Giddens, Zoe Jaques, and Louise Joy, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2026)
- Melvill, O., “An Indefinite Article: Karen Jennings’ An Island and the Poetics of Displacement”, English in Africa, 53(1), 2026
- Melvill, O., “Reading for Content: How the CAPS Assessment Model for Home Language Literature Discourages Critical Thinking”, Scrutiny2, 28(3), 2024, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/18125441.2024.2402784
Conference and Seminar Presentations
2026“The Sleeping Powers of Thought: Education and Experience in Olive Schreiner’s From Man to Man or Perhaps Only—”, Olive Schreiner! International Conference, UWC
2025“Narrative Voice and Choral Mimesis in Zakes Mda’s Ways of Dying”, Classical Association of South Africa Regional Meeting, UWC
“Emile or, The Modern Prometheus: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Problem of Literary Reception in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein”, Departmental Research Seminar Series, UWC
“I think therefore I write? Or, Writing as Philosophical Practice”, The Catalyst Philosophical Society, UWC
2024“An Indefinite Article: Karen Jennings’ An Island and the Poetics of Disaffection”, Centre for Multilingualism and Diversities Research (CMDR) Seminar Series, UWC
“Collaborative Pedagogy and the Development of Progressive Children’s Literature 1778-1796”, Departmental Research Seminar Series, UWC
2022“‘Wit enough to find it out’: Practical Education and a Lesson in Morals in Maria Edgeworth’s Belinda”, British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Conference 2022, Oxford, UK
2021“Things Fall Apart: Or, How the CAPS Assessment Model for English Literature Discourages Critical Thinking”, Department of English Literary Studies Research Seminar Series, UCT
2014“V.L. 10453: Archival Authority and Myth as History in Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang”, CrossCurrents Conference, UCT
Research Fellow
Qualifications: BA (Rhodes), BA Hons (Wits), MA (Essex), DLitt (UWC)
Position: Research Fellow
Email: rfield@uwc.ac.za
Position: Research Fellow
Email: rfield@uwc.ac.za
Biography
Dr Roger Field’s current research interests include the Greek poet Constantin Cavafy (1883-1933), the South African writer Achmat Dangor (1948-2020), and the presence of Cavafy’s poetry in SA literature. He has supervised theses on diverse topics including the work of Dennis Brutus, Vladimir Nabakov, Alex la Guma, Redi Tlhabi, and Sembene Ousmane.Publications
- 2025: The Early Writings of Alex la Guma: Reflections on Cultcha, Identity and Freedom in the 1950s and 1960s (Edited by Andre Odendaal and Roger Field) ISBN 97801-928246-71-8
- 2019: “Cavafy, Vos, Dangor: A belated reply to Phil van Schalkwyk”. Literator, 40(1), a 1552. https://doi.org/ 10.4102/lit.v40i1.1552.
- 2019: “Truth and Equivocation in Cavafy’s Poetry of Antiquity”. English in Africa; 46(2): 47-66. DOI : 10.4314/eia.v46i2.3 https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC-84075b006.
- 2017: “The Classics, African Literature and the Critics”. English in Africa, 44: 73 –95. http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/eia.v44i1.5.
- 2016: “Freud, Said, and the Ancient and Classical Worlds”. Literator, 37(1) http://d.doi.org/10.4102/lit.v37i1.1234.
- 2015: “Alex la Guma”. In Ray, S and H Schwarz, The Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies (Wiley
- Blackwell).
- 2012: “’…The Agapanthi, Asphodels of the Negroes…’: Life-Writing, Landscape and Race in the South African Diaries and Poetry of George Seferis”. English Studies in Africa, 55(1): 77-92. https://doi.org/10.1080/00138398.2012.682466.
- 2011: "Coming Home, Coming Out: Achmat Dangor’s Journeys Through Myth and Constantin Cavafy”. English Studies in Africa, 54(2): 103-117. DOI: 10.1080/00138398.2011.626190.
- 2010: Alex la Guma: A Literary and Political Biography. Oxford: James Currey, Johannesburg: Jacana.
- 2021 “’Remember, Body’: A Phenomenological Approach to the Poetry of Constantin Cavafy”. Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern AfricaVolume 33(2) 133-142, DOI: 10.1080/1013929X.2021.1970355
Qualification: PhD (University of Stellenbosch)
Position: Lecturer (Extended Curriculum Programme); Research Fellow
Email: dcarstens@uwc.ac.za
Dr. Carstens has presented a TEDx talk, and has guest-edited special issues of Matter:
Journal of New Materialist Research Vol. 2(1) and Somatechnics: Journal of Bodies – Technologies _ Power, Vols. 14(1) and 14 (2). His research has appeared in volumes by Palgrave (Indigenous Creatures, Native Knowledges, and the Arts), Sternberg Press (Fiction as Method) and Routledge ( Hydrofeminist Thinking with Oceans ), as well as journals such as Religion Vol 53(4), Somatechnics Vols 14 (2) & 10 (1), Parallax Vol 24(3) and Gender Questions Vol 5(1).
Position: Lecturer (Extended Curriculum Programme); Research Fellow
Email: dcarstens@uwc.ac.za
Biography
Delphi Carsterns'multidisciplinary research interests examine the ways in which the contemporary situation of permacrisis impacts knowledge-production in the Arts and Sciences. His accredited publications survey the usefulness of novel conceptual/pedagogical tools and methodologies – literary, artistic, scientific, and theoretical – that might enable productive ways of navigating the uncanny personal, social, and ecological crises of our times. He has published extensively on forms of critical literary, artistic, and theoretical enquiry that are redirecting language and discourse away from the humanist fiction of discreet individuality toward a more inclusive posthuman vision of the self as materially entangled with the non-human world.Dr. Carstens has presented a TEDx talk, and has guest-edited special issues of Matter:
Journal of New Materialist Research Vol. 2(1) and Somatechnics: Journal of Bodies – Technologies _ Power, Vols. 14(1) and 14 (2). His research has appeared in volumes by Palgrave (Indigenous Creatures, Native Knowledges, and the Arts), Sternberg Press (Fiction as Method) and Routledge ( Hydrofeminist Thinking with Oceans ), as well as journals such as Religion Vol 53(4), Somatechnics Vols 14 (2) & 10 (1), Parallax Vol 24(3) and Gender Questions Vol 5(1).
Administrative Staff
Position: Administrative Officer - Department of English
Email: pngeno@uwc.ac.za
Email: pngeno@uwc.ac.za
