Dr Deborah Seddon

Deborah Seddon (Sabbatical first 6 months of 2013)

Lecturer

B.A. (Rhodes), B.A. (Hons Rhodes), M.A. (Rhodes), Ph.D. (Cambridge)

email address: d.seddon@ru.ac.za

Teaching and Research interests:

The appropriation and translation of Shakespeare in the nineteenth and early twentieth century: especially Shakespeare in African languages, and feminist readings. Seventeenth-century poetry and prose. Oral and performance poetry in South Africa. American literature and politics in the nineteenth century; African-American literature, including slave narratives. Identification in literature, literature and the self, the political and psychological experience of reading.

Deborah Seddon has published articles on contemporary and twentieth-century South African literature, South African orature, and nineteenth- and early twentieth-century appropriations of Shakespeare.

Publications

“Unsettling South Africa’s Inert Past: Denis Hirson’s White Scars: On Reading and Rites of Passage”. Review essay in Scrutiny2 13.1 (2008).

“Written Out, Writing In: Orature in the South African Literary Canon.” English in Africa 35.1 (2008). (Forthcoming).

“The Colonial Encounter and The Comedy of Errors: Solomon Plaatje’s Diphosho-phosho.” Shakespeare International Yearbook 8 (2008). (Forthcoming).

“Delia Bacon and the Making of the American Shakespeare”: a chapter in a book of essays on “The International Spread of Shakespeare.” Cambridge Scholar’s Press. (Forthcoming).

“‘The story that follows is true’: Secret Stealing and the Habits of Entitlement.” People who have stolen from me by David Cohen, Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldier by Alexandra Fuller. Review Essay in Scruntiny2 10.1 (2005): 86-96.

“Shakespeare’s Orality: Solomon Plaatje’s Setswana Translations.” Special Issue of English Studies in Africa: Globalising the English Renaissance. 47.2 (2004): 77-95.

“Louis de Bernières” in British Writers Series, Charles Scribner and Sons, Gale Group.

“Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: an African Childhood by Alexandra Fuller.” Book Review in Gender Agenda: The Magazine of the Cambridge University Women’s Union. Issue 5, Easter 2003.

“Lost in Translation: Sol Plaatje, ‘William Shake-the-Sword,’ and South African Culture.” African Review of Books. Online posting, December 2003.

“Lost in Translation: Sol Plaatje, ‘William Shake-the-Sword,’ and South African Culture.”
Litnet, South African Online Literary Journal. Online posting, March 2003.

“Stepping Through the Looking Glass: The Recognition Scene in Henry James’s The Ambassadors.” Association of English University Teachers of South Africa, Conference Proceedings, University of Western Cape, SA. July 1996.

Papers given at conferences etc.

“Lobola, the Intombi, and the Soft-Porn Centaur: Teaching King Lear in the Post-Apartheid South African Classroom.” Paper delivered at International conference on “Teaching the Early Modern Period” at University College, Dublin, 27 June 2008.

“‘Be a mighty hard message’: Toni Morrison’s Beloved and the Exploration of Whiteness in the Post-Apartheid Classroom.” Paper delivered at a Colloquium entitled “Interrogating ‘whiteness’: literary representations of ‘race’ in Africa” at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Port Elizabeth, 10 May 2008.

“Written Out, Writing In: Orature in the South African Literary Canon”. Paper delivered at an international conference entitled “A World Elsewhere: Orality, Manuscript and Print in Colonial and Post-Colonial Cultures,” Centre for the Book, Cape Town, 2-4 April 2007.

“Delia Bacon and the Making of the American Shakespeare”. Paper delivered at an international conference entitled “The International Spread of Shakespeare,” 7th Triennial Congress of the Shakespeare Society of Southern Africa, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, 24-27 June 2007.

“‘He wrote it for me’: Shakespeare and the Romantic Reader”. The Shakespeare Birthday Lecture for the Shakespeare Society of Southern Africa, 21 April 2005.

“The Colonial Encounter and The Comedy of Errors: Reading Sol Plaatje’s Diphosho-phosho”. Wits Renaissance Colloquium 2004, Wits University, Johannesburg, SA, 15 October 2004.

“The Text of Modern Life”: Delia Bacon and Shakespeare’s Republican Legacy” & “Lost in Translation: Sol Plaatje and William Shake-the-Sword.” British Shakespeare Association Conference, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. 29–31 August 2003.

“Translation and Orature: The Oral and Textual Histories of Sol Plaatje’s ‘William Shake-the-Sword’.” The Sixth Triennial Congress of the Shakespeare Society of Southern Africa: “Colonial Shakespeare: Performance, Translation and Reception,’ Rhodes University, Grahamstown, SA. 25–28 June 2003.

“Sol Plaatje and ‘William Shake-The-Sword’: Identification in Translation.” ‘New South Africa Colloquium,’ Centre for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, Nottingham Trent University, UK. 12 April 2003.

“Sol Plaatje and ‘William Shake-The-Sword’: Identification in Translation.” Southern African Texts and Contexts Seminar, Oxford University, UK. 18 February 2003.

“Izibongo and the Archive: The 1998 South African Oral and Performance Poetry Festival.” Co-authored with Richard Bowker. Interaction Conference, Stellenbosch University, SA. Sept 1998.

“Stepping Through the Looking Glass: The Recognition Scene in Henry James’s The Ambassadors.” Association of English University Teachers of South Africa, University of Western Cape, SA. July 1996.

Other publications:

Since 2006 I have been a member of Aerial Publishing, a self-financing Community Publishing Project. The committee annually calls for manuscripts of poetry and prose, mainly from Grahamstown writers, and chooses two per year to publish. In 2008 we published two books of poetry: Do Men Wear Clothes by Dudu Saki and On Gardening by Mariss Everitt, both poets from Grahamstown. I edited Everitt’s On Gardening and co-edited Saki’s Do Men Wear Clothes. As in previous years, both books were launched at Wordfest during the National Arts Festival. To view Aerial Publishing’s entire poetry catalogue online go to the Readers Forum Website: and search for “Aerial Publishing”.

“Artificer of Seams: The Digital Joinery of Dina Zoe Belluigi’s unbridled” Catalogue Essay published for the fine art exhibition unbridled by Dina Zoe Belluigi during Grahamstown National Arts Festival 2006.

Research Seminar: 19 March 2013, Department of English

English Honours Seminar Room

17h15

All welcome

Writing revolution, failing, changing gear: the manuscript revisions of Waiting for the Barbarians

Prof David Attwell

Biography: Prof Attwell is Chair of Modern Literature, Head of the Department of English and Related Literature at the Univeristy of York. He is currently on a two-year Leverhulme Research Fellowship in order to write a critical biography of J. M. Coetzee, focussing on the genesis of the major novels.

‌English Department Research Seminar
14 March 2013
17h15
The Department of English Common Room
All Welcome

Merlin in the North:
History and Prophecy in Medieval Scandinavia
Sometime between 1123 and 1139, in Oxford, a man named Geoffrey of Monmouth
finished an historical work of dubious veracity known as the 'Historia regum Britanniae'
(the 'History of the Kings of Britain'). So popular was the work that some 217
manuscripts containing it have been listed, with about a third of those dating from before
the end of the 12th century. The book was translated into a wide array of languages,
including German, Italian, French, Welsh, and Old Norse. It was a medieval bestseller,
and the foundation upon which almost all subsequent Arthurian material is based.
Embedded in the larger work was a section called the 'Prophetiae Merlini' (the
'Prophecies of Merlin').
This presentation describes and analyses the interface between Old Norse vernacular
literature and Latin historiography. It also examines the variant approaches to history and
fiction that these two traditions maintain. In doing so the presentation illuminates some
of the more interesting facets of Old Norse literature, and also some of the problems
raised by medieval translation theory.

‌

English Department Research Seminar: 28 February 2013, 17h15

Department Common Room

Frontier Fictions: Settler Stories and the Origins of White Guilt

Rebecca Weaver-Hightower (University of North Dakota)

Abstract: In this presentation, Weaver-Hightower will give an overview of her book, Frontier Fictions, which offers a comparative reading of South African, Australian, US, and Canadian books about settlement in what Mary Louise Pratt has called “the contact zone.” Weaver-Hightower will discuss her methodology and process before giving a more detailed reading of her argument, with a focus on 19^th century Anglophone South African literature. In particular, this paper will address the role of literature in managing the guilt and anxiety resulting from settlement by looking at how narratives function like defense mechanisms. This book, Weaver-Hightower will explain, comes from her attempt to address the nagging question of the sources (historical, psychological, and cultural) of what twentieth century conservatives call “white guilt.”

Biography: Rebecca Weaver-Hightower is an Associate Professor of English specializing in postcolonial studies at the University of North Dakota. Her book Empire Islands: Castaways, Cannibals and Fantasies of Conquest (Minnesota 2007), analyzes how island castaway tales presented fantasies that made the expansion of empire more palatable. Her current work analyzes Australian, South African, Canadian, and U.S. frontier literatures for how certain stories helped those cultures to process the guilt from the displacement of indigenous peoples during colonial settlement. She is also currently co-editing a volume on postcolonial film with Peter Hulme entitled Postcolonial Film and has recently co-edited a special journal issue on Australian literature. Weaver-Hightower has published more than a dozen essays on Caribbean, Irish, Australian, African, and British literatures and film; and she is Book Reviews editor of The Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies. She enjoys traveling internationally (most often to South Africa, Australia, and England) to work with dusty old books in archives and learn about the cultures of the places about which she reads and writes.

Dr Deborah Seddon

Lecturer

B.A. (Rhodes), B.A. (Hons Rhodes), M.A. (Rhodes), Ph.D. (Cambridge)

email address: d.seddon@ru.ac.za

Teaching and Research interests:

Publications

Papers given at conferences etc.

Other publications:

Oxford Award for Excellence

DAVID ATTWELL

RUSSELL COMRIE

Rebecca Weaver-Hightower

THANK YOU

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2013 SEMINARS