Deborah Seddon

Position: Senior 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:

South African Literature and Orature; South African, African-American, Afro-Caribbean and Black British spoken word, oral and performance poetry; Afro-Caribbean and African-American literature including the slave narrative; American literature and politics in the nineteenth century; Transnational Literature; Early Modern Literature, especially Shakespeare’s afterlife; Poetry; Identification in literature, literature and the self, the political and psychological experience of reading.

Selected Publications:

Books/Book Chapters:

Forthcoming:  “Paternity and Intertextuality in Christine Dixie’s The Binding”. Commissioned book chapter in a publication from Fourthwall Books devoted to readings of the recent fine art exhibition by South African visual artist Christine Dixie, The Binding, which is now part of the permanent collection at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC.

2012: “Written Out, Writing In: Orature in the South African Literary Canon”. Print, Text, and Book Cultures in South Africa. Ed. Andrew van der Vlies. Johannesburg: Wits University Press. 306-324.

2011: "Lobola, Intombi, and the Soft-Porn Centaur: Teaching King Lear in the Post-Apartheid South African Classroom”. Teaching the Early Modern Period. Ed. Derval Conroy & Danielle Clarke. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 81-103.

Journal Articles:

2014: “‘Be a Mighty Hard Message’: Toni Morrison’s Beloved and the Exploration of Whiteness in the Post-Apartheid Classroom.” Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies. 15.1: 29-52.

2011: “Linton Kwesi Johnson”. British Writers. 17:89-106.

2009: “The Colonial Encounter and The Comedy of Errors: Solomon Plaatje’s Diphosho-phosho”.  Special Issue on Twentieth Century South African Shakespeare, Shakespearean International Yearbook. 9: 66-86.

2008: “Unsettling South Africa’s Inert Past: Denis Hirson’s White Scars: On Reading and Rites of Passage”. Scrutiny2. 13.1: 82-91.

2008: “Written Out, Writing In: Orature in the South African Literary Canon”. English in Africa 35.1: 133-150.

2007: “Louis de Bernières”. British Writers. 12: 65-80.

2005: “‘The Story that Follows is True’: Secret Stealing and the Habits of Entitlement”. Scruntiny2. 10.1: 86-96.

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

Research/Teaching Awards:

Two-year Newton Advanced Fellowship Research Award from the British Academy (March 2015 – March 2017)

Vice-Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award, 2011

Academic Engagements:

Honours Year Coordinator

Institutional/Professional Activities:

The Cycle of Knowledge

Member: Aerial Publishing (a Community Publishing Project)

Last Modified: Sat, 20 Jan 2024 09:05:47 SAST