Head of the Department Prof J A Wessels

BA (Hons) (UFS) MPhil (Oxon) DLitt et Phil (Unisa) CELTA

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Professor Andries Wessels, BA(Hons) (UFS) MPhil (Oxford) DLitt et Phil (Unisa) CELTA (Cambridge) is the Head of Department. He is particularly interested in modernism and modern literature (in particular the work of James Joyce and TS Eliot), Irish literature, comparative literature and translation. His MPhil studies focused on the Modern Period (1880-1960), and his DLitt et Phil was entitled “Decadence and resilience: the aristocratic novel in English in the Twentieth Century”. Research areas: Modernism, issues of national and cultural identity, Irish literature, translation Some recent publications and papers “The public, the private and the power of love: decisive tensions in Michiel Heyns’s The Children’s Day”, English in Africa, 39(1), May 2012, pp. 57-72. “Intertekstualiteit en modernistiese kompleksiteit in Henriette Grové se Linda Joubert-romans”, Tydskrif vir Letterkunde, 48(2), Spring, 2011, pp. 5-22. “The outsider as insider: the Jewish-Afrikaans poetry of Olga Kirsch”, in Prooftexts [an American journal of Jewish Studies] 29, 2009, University of Indiana, pp. 63-85. “‘Human kind cannot bear very much reality: Modernist perceptions of time and experience,” inaugural lecture (Chair of English), University of Pretoria, 24 March 2009. “Die problematisering van die etiese: Deon Meyer se Infanta as ‘hard-boiled’ misdaadroman”, Tydskrif vir Letterkunde, 44(2), Pretoria, Spring 2007, pp. 104-118. “Marlene van Niekerk se Agaat as inheemse ‘Big House’-roman”, Tydskrif vir Letterkunde,43(2), Pretoria, Spring 2006, pp. 31-45. “Resolving history: negotiating the past in Molly Keane’s Big House novels”, in Molly Keane: Centenary Essays, edited by Eibhear Walshe and Gwenda Young, Four Courts Press, Dublin, Ireland, 2006:27-35. Departmental administrator Ms Lindiwe Mahlangu

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Prof D Medalie

BA (Hons) (Witwatersrand) (MPhil) (Oxford) (DPhil) (Oxford)

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Professor D. Medalie, BA(Hons)(Wits) (MPhil)(Oxford) (DPhil)(Oxford) is an author and academic. His teaching and research interests include Modernism and early twentieth century literature; South African literature and Jane Austen; and Creative Writing. His most recent publications include a study of E. M. Forster, E. M. Forster's Modernism, published by Palgrave (U.K.) in 2002 and his first novel, The Shadow Follows, published by Picador Africa in 2006. Research areas: Early twentieth century literature (especially Modernism), South African literature, creative writing. Recent publications: '‘Myself creating what I saw’: sympathy and solipsism in Jane Austen’s Emma'. English Studies in Africa, 2013, 56: 2, pp.1-13. “‘To Retrace Your Steps’: The Power of the Past in Post-Apartheid Literature”. English Studies in Africa, 2012, Vol.55, No.1. 3-15. “The Uses of Nostalgia”. English Studies in Africa, 2010, Vol. 53, No.1. 35-44. “Alan Paton’s Short Fiction: Authority and Other Quandaries in The Hero of Currie Road”.English in Africa, 2010, Vol. 37, No.2. 57-70. “Bloomsbury and Other Values”. The Cambridge Companion to E. M. Forster. Ed. David Bradshaw. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, 32-46. “The Cry of Winnie Mandela: Njabulo Ndebele’s Post-Apartheid Novel.” English Studies in Africa, 2006, Vol. 49, No. 2. 51-65. Creative Writing: The Mistress's Dog (Short Stories) Johannesburg: Picador Africa/ Pan Macmillan. 2010. 191pp. “The Mistress's Dog”. To See the Mountain and Other Stories: The Caine Prize for African Writing 2011. Oxford: New Internationalist Publications. 60-68. “Brother Out of Darkness”. New Contrast, 2012, Vol. 40, No.2. Associate Professor Prof C Sandwith (from July 2014)

BA (Hons), MA (Natal), PhD (UKZN) Professor Corinne Sandwith, BA (Hons) (University of Natal) MA (University of Natal) PhD (UKZN), is an Associate Professor in the department. Research interests include a history of reading, readers and cultural debates in early apartheid South Africa with a particular focus on dissident newspapers, debating societies and little magazines. More recent work explores the contemporary public sphere and the South/African postcolony, taking special interest in questions of violence, crime, otherness, gender, sexuality and the body as well as prevailing forms of emancipatory and utopian narrative. 

Research areas: South African intellectual history, book history, the South African public sphere, South African and African literature, the postcolony. Some recent publications and papers World of Letters: Reading Communities and Cultural Debates in Early Apartheid South Africa. Pietermaritzburg: UKZN Press, 2014. “The Banality of Violence: Reading the Daily Sun”. In: Tracks and Traces of Violence: The Representation and Memorialisation of Violence in Africa in Art, Literature and Anthropology. Edited by BIGSAS Workgroup Tracks and Traces of Violence. Bayreuth, 2014 (in press). “‘Yours for Socialism’: Communist Cultural Discourse in Early Apartheid South Africa”. Safundi, 2013, 14(3), pp. 283–306. Africa South: Viewpoints and Perspectives, 1956–1961. Edited by MJ Daymond and Corinne Sandwith. Pietermaritzburg: UKZN Press, 2011. “Postcolonial Violence: Narrating South Africa, May 2008”. Current Writing, 2010, October 22(2), pp. 60–82. “‘Entering the Territory of Incitement’: Oppositionality and Africa South.” Social Dynamics, 2009, 35(1), pp 123–136. “The Work of Cultural Criticism: Re-visiting The South African Opinion.” Alternation, 2008, 15(1), pp. 38–70. Senior Lecturer Dr MA Brown

BA (Hons) MA (Rhodes) MA (London) DLitt (Pretoria) ATCL (Trinity College London) CELTA

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E-mail: [email protected] Dr M. A. Brown, BA(Hons) MA (Rhodes) MA (London), DLitt (Pret), ATCL (Trinity College, London) CELTA (Cambridge), is a senior lecturer in the Department. Her interests are varied but tend to cluster about lyric poetry, eighteenth-century literature and all forms of the romance from Spenser and Malory to Tolkien, Le Guin and J.K. Rowling. Students who secretly commit poetry or lurk around the science fiction shelves of their local bookshop are welcome! She has recently been awarded her DLitt, entitled Memes, magic and the making of meaning in re-visioning fantasy for young adults. Research areas: The Romance from Malory to contemporary science fiction, fantasy and children’s literature Recent publications: “Light on shades: complex constructions of identity in the poems of Chris Mann”.English Academy Review, 2011, 28(1) May, pp. 64-72. “The physics of responsibility: alternate worlds and adolescent choices”.Mousaion, 2010, 28(2), pp. 1-13. “Harry Potter and the reluctant reader”. Mousaion, 2009, 27(2) Special edition. pp. 47-57. “Towards reclaiming the colonised mind: the liberating fantasies of Duiker and Ihimaera. Papers: Explorations into Children’s Literature, 2008, 18 (2), pp. 35-40.   Between a rock and a hard place: hidden stories and The hidden star. Mousaion, 26 (2), 2008, pp.162-173. Why are South Africans afraid of tokoloshes? The Lion and the Unicorn, 32 (3), 2008, pp. 260-270.

Senior Lecturer Mr PC Lenahan

BA (Hons) MEd (Rhodes) MPhil (Oxon) CELTA DELTA (Cambridge) DipTEFLA (RSA/Cambridge)

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E-mail: [email protected] Mr P. C. Lenahan, BA(Hons) MEd(Rhodes) MPhil(Oxon) DELTA (Cambridge), is a senior lecturer in the Department. His interests and specialist fields are 16th and 17th century literature (including Shakespeare) and TESOL theory, methodology and practice. He is also interested in Thomas Pringle and Olive Schreiner. Lecturer Mr JA Goedhals

BA (Hons) (Rhodes) MA (Wits)

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Mr J.A. Goedhals, BA (Hons) (Rhodes) MA (Wits) HED (Unisa), is a lecturer in the Department. His special interests include poetry, the poetics of Modernism, the history of 'science', and the literature of estrangement (Kafka, Hasek, Conrad, Peake). Recent Publications/Papers Lafcadio Hearn and George Gould’s Philosophy of spectacles:  the story of a Buddhist-Christian encounter. In Anastasia Nicéphore and David Brooks (Eds). Diasporic Identities and Empire. Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 199-212. ISBN (10): 1-4438-5165-5, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-5165-7  2014, In press. ‘W.B. Yeats’s “language of the eye”: imaged words, imagined worlds’: paper presented at the International Association for Irish Literature (IASIL) conference in Bath, October 2005.  'Lafcadio Hearn and George Gould’s ‘Philosophy of Spectacles’: the story of a Buddhist–Christian encounter' paper presented at the South Atlantic Modern Language Association (SAMLA) conference in Durham, NC, Nov. 2012.  'Lafcadio Hearn and George Gould’s ‘Philosophy of Spectacles’: the story of a Buddhist–Christian encounter' to be published as a chapter in 2013 in a book entitled 'Diasporic Identities and Empire' by Cambridge Scholars Publishing.  'Impersonal poetry' A Look Away, Issue 6, Quarter 3, 2007.  Lecturer Mrs I Noome

BA (Hons) MA (Pret) HED (Unisa)

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Mrs Idette Noomé, BA(Hons) MA(Pret) HED(Unisa), is a lecturer in the Department. Her MA was entitled Milton's Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained and Klopstock's Messias: A Comparative Study. Her interests include Anglo-Saxon, Middle English, 17th century literature and modern drama. She focuses on comparative literature, translation and specialist editing, for which she has developed under- and postgraduate courses. She is also very interested in children's literature, and has initiated a research project on late 19th and early 20th century children's literature at the Sammy Marks Museum. She is currently doing research for her DLitt. Research areas: Translation studies, plain language, children's literature (L.M. Montgomery, Louisa May Alcott, late 19th and early 20th century literature for girls), Milton, Chaucer Recent publications:             “What the little Markses knew about Africa.” English Academy Review, 2006, 23(1): 84-101. “Top dogs and underdogs: insiders and outsiders in selected girls’ school literature.” Children’s Books and Child Readers, Constructions of Childhood in English Juvenile Fiction. Bimberg, C & Kullmann, T. (eds). Aachen: Shaker Verlag. ISBN 703-8322-5382-3. Pp.115-143. 2006. (with P.J.H. Titlestad) “D.H. Lawrence at the University of Pretoria.” In D. H. Lawrence Around the World: South African Perspectives (ed. J Phelps). Echoing Green Press. ISBN: 978-0980250114. 2007. “The language editor/supervisor dilemma.” AUETSA conference: Rebranding English. (Proceedings). UCT Press. (2004):67-75. “Shaping the Self: A Bildungsroman for girls?” Literator, 2004, 25(2) August, pp. 125-149. (translation). Machens, Eberhard W. 2009. Platinum, Gold and Diamonds: The Adventure of Hans Merensky’s Discoveries. Pretoria: Protea Book House. ISBN 987-1869-200-6. (Biography, 308 pp). Lecturer Ms K T Soldati-Kahimbaara

BA (Hons) (UNITRA) MA (PU for CHE) JSTC (Butterworth College) CELTA

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 Research areas: Johannesburg in Literature; The South African novel in transition 1990 – 2010 Recent publications:

“Johannesburg: city of dreams or dream city?” Trans: Internet - Zeitschrift fur Kulturwissenschaften 18. Nr Juni 2011 “AIDS writing in two South African novels: The Book of the Dead – Kgebetli Moele, and Beauty’s Gift – Sindiwe Magona”, Kritika Kultura, Feb 2012, Issue 18. p 162.   Lecturer Ms B Kneen

BA (Hons) MA (Pret)

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Ms Bonnie Kneen completed an MA thesis entitled Granpa and the polyphonic teddy bear in Mr Magritte’s multidimensional gorilla park: complexity and sophistication in children’s picture books, and is currently working on a DLitt entitled In/visibility: marginalised sexual desires in young adult literature.

Research areas: Children’s literature, Picture books, Young adult literature, Gender studies, Queer studies, Feminism, Sexuality Recent publications: 'Writing 9/11 for teenagers: Sidekick and the Meg’s diary blog'. Scrutiny2, Issues in English Studies in Southern Africa, 2013, 18:1, pp. 23-31. “Estrangement and indeterminacy: a model for empowerment in David McKee’s I Hate My Teddy Bear”. English Academy Review, 2012, 29(1), 69-78. “Writing 9/11 for teenagers: Sidekick and the Meg’s Diary blog”. Scrutiny2, 2013, 18(1). Forthcoming.  Special guest professor Prof I Rabinowitz (2014)

  Prof Ivan Rabinowitz is a guest lecturer in the English Department. His fields of interest include theory of literature, neuroaesthetics, popular culture, history of science, and the reality of abstractions.             Research areas: Explanatory theories, consciousness, satire, creative writing.  Some recent publications: “Filipendula Literaria’: Applied Literary Studies”. Journal of Literary Studies 26(2), 2010. “Towards the Representation of Chronic Déjà vu: A Neuro-Narratological Excursus”. Scrutiny2, 17(2), 2012. Research Associate Prof R West-Pavlov

MA (Melb) PhD (Cantab) Doctorat (Lille III) Dr Habil (Cologne) Prof Russell West-Pavlov, MA (Melb) PhD (Cambridge) Doctorat (Lille III) Dr Habil (Cologne), taught at the University until the middle of 2013. He is currently at the University of Tübingen, but remains a research associate of the Department. Research areas:  Postcolonial literatures, spatial semiotics, translation studies   Recent publications: 'Contextures: inscriptions of urban space in inner-city Berlin.' Space and Culture, 2013, 16:3, pp. 323-344.   'The politics and spaces of voice: Ngugi’s A grain of wheat and Conrad’s Heart of darkness.' Research in African Literatures, 2013, 44:3 (Fall), pp. 160-175.   Temporalities. The New Critical Idiom Series. London and New York, Routledge. ISBN: 978-0-41552073-7. 2013. Treasure, value and signs in Conrad’s Nostromo. In Rainer Emig (Ed). Treasure in Literature and Culture. Universitatsverlag, WINTER: Heidelberg. ISBN 978-3-8253-6202-7. 2013. Temporalities. London: Routledge, 2012.   Spaces of Fiction / Fictions of Space: Postcolonial Place and Literary DeiXis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmilllan, 2010.  “Pedagogical Memory and the Space of the Classroom: Reading Dangarembga’sNervous Conditions”. Scrutiny2: Issues in English in Africa 17:2 (2012): 67-81.  "Maps and the Geography of Violence: Farah’s Maps and Conrad’s Heart of Darkness”, in The New Violent Cartography: Geo-Analysis after the Aesthetic Turn. Ed. Samson Okoth Opondo & Michael J. Shapiro. New York: Routledge, 2012: 15-32.   “Time and Biopolitics in the Settler Colony”. Australian Literary Studies 26:2 (June 2011), 1-19. Prof. A. Chenells

   Professor Anthony Chennells, an internationally renowned scholar of African literature, has been appointed an Extraordinary Professor in the Department of English since 2004. Prof Chennells taught until his retirement at the University of Zimbabwe. He is also a visiting scholar and research associate at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Research areas: Colonial and Postcolonial literatures, the British novel   Some recent publications:   “Historical novel or novel history? Michael Cawood Green's For the Sake of Silence.” English Academy Review, 29(1), May 2012, pp. 33-45. “Inculturated Catholicisms in Chimamanda Adichie's Purple Hibiscus.” English Academy Review, 26(1), June 2012, pp. 265-276.

“Savages and settlers in Dickens: reading multiple centres.” In Jordan & N. Perera (eds.), Global Dickens, Farnham (UK) and Burlington (US): Ashgate (pp. 311-330). 9781409436119. 2012. “Partisan politics: narrative realism and the rise of the British novel.” Heythrop Journal, A Quarterly Review of Philosophy and Theology, 2011, pp. 148-149. “Nationalism, memory and history in nineteenth-century Britain: a review essay." Heythrop Journal, A Quarterly Review of Philosophy and Theology, 2011, pp. 86-91. “Imperialism, reform and the making of Englishness in Jane Eyre.” Heythrop Journal, A Quarterly Review of Philosophy and Theology, 2011, pp. 152-153. “Inculturated Catholicism’s in Chimamanda Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus.” English Academy Review. 26(1). 2009, pp. 15-26.  Dr Timothy Wright (until June 2014)

  BA (Colorado at Boulder), PhD (Duke) Dr Timothy Wright, BA (Colorado at Boulder), PhD (Duke), is a lecturer in the English Department. His interests include twentieth century Anglophone literature, modernism, the novel, architecture and urban space, and critical theory. His PhD research examined the afterlives of modernism in the novels of Samuel Beckett, J.M. Coetzee, and Kazuo Ishiguro. He is currently working on a project focusing on the representation of cities in the Global South.            Recent publications  “No Home-Like Place: The Lesson of History in Kazuo Ishiguro’s An Artist of the Floating World.” Forthcoming in Contemporary Literature 55:1 (Spring 2014) “The Art of Evasion: Writing and the State in J.M. Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K.” Journal for Literary Studies/Tydskrif vir Literatuurwetenskap 28:3 (Sep 2012): 55-76. Ms Farah Ismail (until May 2014) BA (Hons) MA (Pret)

Ms Farah Ismail's interests are postcolonial theory and fantastic literature, South African fantastic literature, Magical Realism, Young Adult Literature and Romanticism and Imperialism. Mr Georg Nöffke (until May 2014) BA (Hons) MA (Pret)

Mr Georg Nöffke, BA (Hons), MA (Pret) is interested in twentieth-century and contemporary literature, Modernism, intertextuality, and the work of Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath and J.M. Coetzee in particular. He has recently completed his  MA cum laude which focuses on the intertextual dialogue between Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath in selected poems.    Research areas:

 Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, contemporary literature Some recent publications and papers: “‘That gallop was practice’: a horse ride as practice run for things to come in Sylvia Plath’s ‘Whiteness I remember’ and Ted Hughes’s ‘Sam’.” English Academy Review, 30: 2, October, 2013, pp. 6-20. “These super people: the superimposition of Ted Hughes's ‘Brasilia’ on Sylvia Plath's ‘Brasilia’.” Paper presented at Sylvia Plath Symposium, University of Indiana, 2012. Ms Antoinette Pretorius (until May 2014) BA (Hons) (Pret)

Ms Antoinette Pretorius is currently completing a D. Litt on the representation of old age in South African literature. Her research interests include feminist representations of the body, sexuality and gender, the social construction of identity, and the works of J.M Coetzee, Antjie Krog, and Marlene van Niekerk, among others. Some recent publications and papers:  ‘To hrt or not to hrt is a question only for women’: old age and sexuality in Antjie Krog’s Body bereft.  Paper presented at ‘Talking Bodies: An International, Interdisciplinary Conference on Identity, Sexuality, and Representation, Chester, UK, 26-28 March 2013. Mr Dewald Steyn BA (Hons) (Pret)

Mr Dewald Steyn obtained his Honours degree in 2011 at Pretoria. For the degree, he completed a mini-dissertation on the poetry of John Clare entitled The Romantic Escape Artist: Yearnings for freedom in the asylum poetry of John Clare. He is currently working on an MA thesis entitled "The Tyrant of the Imagination”: Anthropomorphic representations of Death in selected contemporary and twentieth-century novels. Ms Fiona Covarr BA (Hons) (Pret)

Ms Fiona Covarr is currently doing an MA in adolescent fantasy literature, focusing on notions of freedom and enslavement in Ursula Le Guin’s Annals of the Western Shore. Her interests lie in Children’s Literature, Medieval Literature, the Arthurian Romance, 19th Century Literature, Classical Mythology, Fantasy and Science Fiction. She also completed a mini-dissertation on Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure for her Honours degree. Mrs E da Gonceicao BA(Hons), HDE (UP)

Mrs Eunice da Gonceicao, BA(Hons), HDE (UP), is particularly interested in creative writing, gender issues, children’s literature and modernist literature. She is currently enrolled for an MA in Creative Writing at UP. 

Ms M F de Waal BA (English Studies)(UP)

  Ms Marguerite de Waal, BA(English Studies) (UP), is currently working on a mini-dissertation which explores the image of the barren dream in selected short lyrics by John Keats. She was awarded the Vice-Chancellor and Principal's medal for the Humanities in 2012. Mr K H Downward BA (Hons) (UP)

Mr Keigan Downward, BA(Hons) (UP), is particularly interested in creative writing. He wrote a mini-dissertation on the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe, and is currently working on an MA Creative Writing. Mr M Garcia BA (Hons) (UP)

  Mr Mario Garcia, BA(Hons) (UP), is interested in Modernism, especially TS Eliot and Conrad, Postmodernism, postcolonialism and literary theory, especially the work of Deleuze and Guattari. His specific interest lies in mapping the literary representation of time and narrative temporality. Mr HA Venter  BA(Hons) (UP)

Mr Adriaan Venter, BA(Hons) (UP), enjoys a wide range of literature, with a special interest in speculative fiction. He is currently working on an MA on liminal aspects of some early works of science fiction. Ms C-D Godfrey (from July) BA English Studies (UP)

Ms Carole-Dominique Godfrey completed a BA English studies degree and is now engaged on an  Honours degree. She is working on a mini-dissertation on the graphic novel, MAUS, A Survivor's Tale by Art Spiegelman, and is interested in studying the three novels of Donna Tartt, The Secret History, The Little Friend and The Goldfinch for her Master's degree.   Ms N Weder (from July) BSc (Interior Architecture) (UP)

  Ms Nandi Weder, BSc (Interior Architecture) (UP) is interested in the role of architecture in literature, urban studies and South African literature. She is currently doing a mini-dissertation on the representation of Johannesburg in the work of Ivan Vladislavić.