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Postcolonial and world literatures
Faculty members researching in this area:
Permanent Postholders: Professor Elleke Boehmer, Dr Patrick Hayes, Dr Ankhi Mukherjee, and Dr Peter McDonald.
Our research:
The study of postcolonial or international literatures in English, and of theories related to this field, has been carried out within the Faculty of English Language and Literature at Oxford since the early 1990s. We have a distinguished record in particular in the general theoretical field of postcolonial studies, in postcolonial book history, and in South Asian and West, East and southern African literatures in English (fiction and poetry). In recent years the Faculty has provided a home to the noted postcolonial scholars Robert Young and Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, while the prominent theorist Homi Bhabha is a product of the Oxford DPhil programme. The leading Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong’o gave the Clarendon lectures here in 1996.
Since 2001 and throughout the year in term, the lively and well-attended seminar in postcolonial theory and literature takes place fortnightly at Wadham College, convened by Professor Boehmer and Dr Mukherjee. In recent years the seminar has featured papers by Helen Gilbert, Priya Gopal, Graham Huggan, Pramod Nayar, Ato Quayson, and Robert Young, amongst others, and has also hosted a range of lectures and readings by eminent postcolonial and international writers, including Amit Chaudhuri, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Les Murray, and Tayeb Salih.
Oxford offers exceptional resources for anyone interested in doing substantial research into the history of colonialism and its aftermath, as well as postcolonial book history. It is home to the second largest living archive in the United Kingdom, the Bodleian Library and its many affiliates, including the Centre for the Study of the Book, Rhodes House, the Oriental Institute Library, and Queen Elizabeth House. With Oxford University Press, Pearson Education, Macmillan, Blackwells, the African Books Collective, Oneworld and James Currey all based in the city, it is also one of the major centres of the contemporary Anglophone publishing world.
Recent publications:
Elleke Boehmer et al (eds), J.M. Coetzee in Context and Theory. Contiuum. 2009
Elleke Boehmer, Nelson Mandela. Oxford University Press. 2008
Elleke Boehmer, Nile Baby. Oxford University Press. 2008
Peter D. McDonald, The Literature Police. Oxford University Press. 2009
Ankhi Mukherjee, Aesthetic Hysteria. Routledge. 2007
Other information:
In 2009 Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee is due to give two readings at the University, hosted by the English Faculty and Wolfson College.
In May 2009 Caryl Phillips will be a Visiting Fellow at Queens College and will offer a range of readings and seminar papers.
A three-day literary festival to commemorate the path-breaking work of the black Zimbabwean modernist Dambudzo Marechera will also be held in May 2009, convened by doctoral student Dobrota Pucherova.
The African Studies Centre regularly hosts seminars and workshops on topics related to issues of postcolonial identity and interpretation.