Research Articles (English)
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From a habit to a husband : representation of the intersection between religion and masculinities in John Ruganda’s play, The Burdens (1972)
(Desmond Tutu Centre for Religion and Social Justice, University of the Western Cape, 2020)This paper examines how John Ruganda represents the intersection between religion and masculinities in his play, The Burdens (1972), which imagines an ex-Catholic nun marrying and bringing up a family. It argues that ... -
Ice-Candy-Man and In the Country of Men : the politics of cruelty and the witnessing child
(Stellenbosch University, Department of Linguistics, 2010)Using two novels employing child narrators as observers of atrocities by which they are not only profoundly affected, but in which they become implicated (respectively by a Pakistani and a Libyan author), the article sets ... -
The emergence of black queer characters in three post-apartheid novels
(Tydskrif vir Letterkunde Association, 2019)Before the end of apartheid, queer lives were almost entirely unrepresented in public literary works in South Africa. Only after the fall of institutionalised apartheid could literature begin to look back at the role of ... -
Canine agents in two South African short stories
(Van Schaik Publishers, 2018)This article explores the role of the figure of the dog in two contemporary South African short stories. It considers the metaphorical-cum-allegorical significance of the textual animal in these texts, asking how the writers ... -
The boundaries of desire and intimacy in post-apartheid South African queer film : Oliver Hermanus's Skoonheid
(Department of Visual Arts, University of Pretoria, 2018)South African cinema is still dominated, both in terms of number and commercial success, by films featuring white Afrikaans-speaking characters. These films are mostly politically voiceless, ignoring the contentious racial ... -
Re-imagining family and gender roles in Aminatta Forna's Ancestor Stones
(Academy of Science of South Africa, 2017)This paper examines the interplay between polygyny and gender by exploring the way in which family structure and gender roles are negotiated, imagined and exercised in fiction. Aminatta Forna's Ancestor stones (2006) is ... -
'Taming untamed pests' : representing female sexualities in Tiyambe Zeleza's Smouldering charcoal and James Ng'ombe's Sugarcane with salt
(AOSIS Publishing, 2017-05-29)In this article, I explore a range of intersections between the ideological-material legacies of a dictatorial regime and representations of female sexuality in Malawian fiction. I am particularly interested in using ... -
'Speaking' and 'silence' in the memoirs of Petronella van Heerden
(AOSIS Publishing, 2017-04-28)Petronella van Heerden’s memoirs have received little academic attention. This article aims to contribute to the limited archive of research on her work to highlight women’s involvement in South African and Afrikaner ... -
Unhomeliness, unending phobias and liminality in Senait Mehari's Heart of Fire
(AOSIS Publishing, 2017-04-28)In Senait Mehari’s Heart of Fire, the legacy of childhood maltreatment is reproduced in the relationship between the father, Ghebrehiwet, and the daughter, Senait. A former victim of atrocity, Ghebrehiwet is a broken man ... -
To a dubious critical salvation : Etienne Leroux and the canons of South African English criticism
(University of Pretoria, 2015)This article presents a case study in cross-cultural literary reception following the act of literary translation-in this instance, of author Etienne Leroux-from Afrikaans into English. It describes the literary reception ... -
Two bad-time stories and a song of hope
(AOSIS Publishing, 2002-08)Using three fairly recently published South African texts – David B. Coplan’s In the Time of Cannibals – The Word Music of South Africa’s Basotho Migrants (1994); A.H.M. Scholtz’s Vatmaar – ’n Lewendagge verhaal van ’n ... -
Translating cultural transition in Kgebetli Moele’s "Room 207"
(AOSIS Publishing, 2010-07)This article deals with the issue of cultural translation in a postapartheid text through the analysis of language, setting and discourse to highlight cultural transition in a society where socio-political mutations ... -
Sustaining the imaginative life : mythology and fantasy in Neil Gaiman’s American gods
(AOSIS Publishing, 2006-12)This examination of “American gods” argues that mythology is the bedrock for creative and poetic expression in literature that explores and comments on the universality of contemporary human concerns in a world where ... -
Crossing Over. stories of the transition, or “history from the inside”
(AOSIS Publishing, 1997-11)Crossing Over: stories of the transition, or “history from the inside” The collection of stories entitled Crossing Over: New Stories for a New South Africa (1995) commemorates a remarkable turning point in this country's ... -
History, memory and reconciliation : Njabulo Ndebele’s The cry of Winnie Mandela and Pumla Gobodo- Madikizela’s A human being died that night
(AOSIS Publishing, 2006-08)This article deals with two texts written during the process of transition in South Africa, using them to explore the cultural and ethical complexity of that process. Both Njabulo Ndebele’s “The cry of Winnie Mandela” and ... -
Animals and nature : mapping storylines and metaphors in David Kramer’s narratives
(AOSIS Publishing, 2011-04)This article discusses the representation of animals and nature in selected lyrics from the oeuvre of singer, songwriter and producer David Kramer and considers his engagement with historical and contemporary discourses ... -
Disability and masculinity in South African autosomatography
(AOSIS Publishing, 2014-04)This article examines the representation of disability by disabled black South African men as portrayed in two texts from the autosomatography genre, which encompasses first-person narratives of illness and disability. ... -
Versifying the environment and the ‘Oil Encounter’ : Tanure Ojaide’s Delta Blues & home songs
(CSSALL, 2013)This paper focuses on Nigeria’s Niger Delta using literary representations from the region to interrogate the oil encounter and an exploration of its impact on social and environmental structures. The paper situates ... -
The Great Trek as Exodus in J.D. Kestell's and N. Hofmeyr's De Voortrekkers, of Het Dagboek van Izak van der Merwe
(Faculty of Theology, University of the Free State, 2003)Both before and after the end of the nineteenth century the Great Trek of the 1830s and 1840s was a recurrent theme in historical fiction. Not only in many of the novels written in Dutch and Afrikaans, but also in some ... -
An unusual freedom : Mbulelo Mzamane's Mzala
(Taylor & Francis, 1999-12)Mzamane's comments over the years seem to reflect a doubt or ambivalence over the status of his first collection of stories, Mzala (1980). In his introduction Mzamane describes himself as 'a teacher first, an aspiring ...
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