Professor Sam Naidu

B.Journ (Rhodes), BA (Hons) (Rhodes), MA (Rhodes), PhD (Rhodes & SOAS, University of London), PGDHE (Rhodes)

Email Address: s.naidu@ru.ac.za

 

Teaching and Research Interests:

South African/Postcolonial Crime Fiction; Nineteenth Century Detective Fiction; African Literature; Transnational Literature (Literature of the African, Latin American, and South Asian Diasporas); Postcolonial Feminist Literature; Oral/written interface in colonial South Africa; English transcriptions of Xhosa folktales; the publication and marketing of indigenous South African orature; Folklore and Ethnographic Writings of George McCall Theal; Emily Dickinson; and, Experimental Pedagogies, including the combination of Community Engagement and Literary Studies, as well as the use of yoga in tertiary education.    

 

Special Issue of Clues: A Journal of Detection Fall 2024:

Sam is guest editing a special Issue of Clues: A Journal of Detection Fall 2024. This special issue of Clues will focus on BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) female detectives across eras, genres, media, and geographical locations. The aim is to give centre-stage to BIPOC female detective figures in literary texts, television, film, and other literary forms, that remain, to a large extent, marginalised within this still white and male-dominated sphere. Of particular interest, is the intersection between race and gender in these works. Contributors are urged to interrogate the representations, in their selected primary texts, of categories such as ‘black’, ‘indigenous’, ‘of colour’, ‘female’, and, ‘woman’, as they relate to the notion of ‘detective’ or ‘investigator’, and the genre of crime fiction more generally. Further, the special issue aims to centre BIPOC authors, critics and scholars. Sam’s contribution to the project will focus on the ambiguous female detective figure in African noir from South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya. 

 

Print Culture and African Literature (1860-1960) Project:

Sam is currently participating in a project co-ordinated by Steph Newell (Yale University) and Karin Barber (LSE, University of Birmingham) on Print Culture and African Literature 1860-1960. This project connects book history research with literary studies by focusing on African printing presses as significant sites of cultural and literary production. Contributors provide concentrated case studies of print cultures in precolonial and colonial African contexts, including consideration of editors, proofreaders, compositors, correspondents, authors, readers, intellectuals and educators alongside discussions of literary forms and contents, politics and language. Her own contribution focuses on George McCall Theal’s early career (1861-1881) in the Eastern Cape as a journalist, teacher, folklorist and budding historian. In particular, his relationship with Lovedale Mission and Press is examined.  

 

Andrew W. Mellon Intersecting Diasporas Research Group:

Sam is the founder and co-ordinator of the Intersecting Diasporas Research Group, which studies various transnational texts of the African, Asian, and Latin American diasporas in order to describe the complex and paradoxical experiences of diasporas in a world of increasing mobility and de-territorialism, which yet, in certain locations, also faces increased regulation or prohibition of migration.

 

The Vice Chancellor's Book Award (2019):

Sam is the recipient of the Vice Chancellor’s Book Award for 2019. The book, co-authored with Elizabeth le Roux of the University of Pretoria, is A Survey of South African Crime Fiction: Critical Analysis and Publishing History (2017), UKZN Press.

For more details on Sam's award, feel free to read the article on page 25 in the 2019 Research Report, available here.

 

Selected Publications:

Click here for details of Sam's Published Works, or follow the link to her ORCID account, where you can follow her to be informed of upcoming and new publications: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9456-8657 . You can also follow Sam at https://researchgate.net/profile/Sam_Naidu. 

 

Community Engagement:

In March 2018, Sam launched an official university short course called Community Engagement Reading Club Orientation (CERCO). This course falls under the auspices of the Department of Literary Studies in English and the Rhodes University Community Engagement Division.

 

Institutional/Professional Activities:

Mentor: Mellon Early Career Scholars Programme

Advisory Board: African Literatures in English Series, Wilhelm Fink Publishers, Paderborn, Germany

Associate Editor: Teaching the New English Book Series, Palgrave Macmillan, London, UK

Committee Member: Community Engagement Committee

Member: Rhodes University Sexual Violence Task Team. See the most recent report: http://www.ru.ac.za/criticalstudies/policybriefsfeedbackreports/  

Editorial Board: Journal of Literary Studies

Editorial Board: English in Africa

Editorial Board Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies

External Examiner: UKZN (Pietermaritzburg), UNISA, and UNISA Gender Studies Unit, UCT and Stellenbosch University

Guest Editor: Current Writing Vol 25 No 2, 2013

Guest Editor: Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies Spring 2016

Guest Editor: Scrutiny2 August, 2019 

Reader MA in Creative Writing Programme, Rhodes University

Resident: Department of Latina/Latino Studies, College of Ethnic Studies and Cesar E Chavez Institute, San Francisco State University (2017-2019)

 

Departmental Portfolios:

English 3 Course Coordinator

English 2 Paper Coordinator - Postcolonial Literature

English 2 Paper Coordinator - Transnational Literature

English Honours Paper Coordinator - Africa in the World

Co-ordinator of Department Community Engagement Project (see CERCO above)

 

Last Modified: Sat, 20 Jan 2024 09:26:17 SAST