This set of essays analyses the work of Isabel Hofmeyr, globally recognised as one of South Africa's foremost literary and Indian Ocean scholars. The essays elucidate Hofmeyr's path-breaking studies of transnational histories of the book, African print cultures, and cultural circulations in the Indian Ocean world.
This book draws together reflective and analytical essays by renowned intellectuals from around the world who critically engage with the work of one of the global South's leading scholars of African print cultures and the oceanic humanities. Isabel Hofmeyr's scholarship spans more than four decades, and its sustained and long-term influence on her discipline and beyond is formidable.
While much of the history of print cultures has been written primarily from the North, Isabel Hofmeyr is one of the leading thinkers producing new knowledge in this area from Africa, the Indian Ocean world and the global South. Her major contribution encompasses the history of the book as well as shorter textual forms and abridged iterations of canonical works such as John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress. She has done pioneering research on the ways in which such printed matter moves across the globe, focusing on intra-African trajectories and circulations as well as movements across land and sea, port and shore. The essays gathered here are written in a blend of intellectual and personal modes, and mostly by scholars of Indian and African descent. Via their engagement with Hofmeyr's path-breaking work, the essays in turn elaborate and contribute to studies of print culture as well as critical oceanic studies, consolidating their findings from the point of view of global South historical contexts and textual practices.
Author Biography:
Charne Lavery is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Pretoria and Co-director of the Oceanic Humanities for the Global South project based at WISER, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
Sarah Nuttall is Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies and Director of WISER at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Among her previously published books are Entanglement: Literary and Cultural Reflections on Postapartheid and Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis.
Charne Lavery is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Pretoria and Co-director of the Oceanic Humanities for the Global South project based at WISER, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
Sarah Nuttall is Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies and Director of WISER at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Among her previously published books are Entanglement: Literary and Cultural Reflections on Postapartheid and Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis.
Sunil Amrith is the Renu and Anand Dhawan Professor of History at Yale University. He is author of Unruly Waters.
Gabeba Baderoon is a literary scholar, poet and Associate Professor of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and African Studies at Pennsylvania State University, where she also co-directs the African Feminist Initiative. She is the author of Regarding Muslims: from Slavery to Post-apartheid and four books of poetry, most recently The History of Intimacy.
Karin Barber is Emeritus Professor of African Cultural Anthropology at the University of Birmingham and Visiting Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics. Her publications include A History of African Popular Culture.
Rimli Bhattacharya is the author of 'The Dancing Poet' Rabindranath Tagore and Choreographies of Participation.
Antoinette Burton is Professor of History at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She collaborated with Isabel Hofmeyr on Ten Books That Shaped the British Empire: Creating the Imperial Commons.
Pumla Dineo Gqola is Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies and South African Research Chair in African Feminist Imagination at Nelson Mandela University. Author of five books, including Rape: A South African Nightmare and Female Fear Factory, she also edited Miriam Tlali: Writing Freedom.
Carolyn Hamilton is the South African Research Chair in Archive and Public Culture at the University of Cape Town. She is the author of Terrific Majesty, and co-editor of Refiguring the Archive, The Cambridge History of South Africa and Babel Unbound.
Khwezi Mkhize is Lecturer in the Department of African Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and co-editor of the journal African Studies. He is the author of numerous essays and co-editor of Foundational African Writers: Peter Abrahams, Noni Jabavu, Sibusiso Nyembezi and Es'kia Mphahlele.
Danai S Mupotsa teaches in the Department of African Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
James Ogude is the Director of the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship at the University of Pretoria. He is Professor of African Literature and Cultures and edited Ubuntu and the Reconstitution of Community.
Christopher EW Ouma is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Cape Town. Ouma is the author of Childhood in Contemporary Diasporic African Literature: Memories and Futures Past.
Ranka Primorac is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Southampton, United Kingdom. She is author of The Place of Tears.
Madhumita Lahiri is Associate Professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is the author of Imperfect Solidarities: Tagore, Gandhi, Du Bois, and the Global Anglophone.
Meg Samuelson is Associate Professor in the Department of English and Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide and Associate Professor Extraordinaire at Stellenbosch University.
Lakshmi Subramanian is Research Professor at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences in Calcutta, India. She is the author of Three Merchants of Bombay and A History of India 1707-1857.
