Safundi

31/01/2018

First issue of 2018 out now! v19.1, a special issue titled "Transnational Networks of Gender and Race in South Africa and the United States", guest edited by Claire Cooke and Ana Stevenson, includes work on subjects including: Emily Hobhouse's international activism; transnational African Methodist Episcopal missionary networks; Cecilia Lillian Tshabalala's ideas of the nation; the career of Charlotte Maxeke; transnational 'sisterhood' and the activist left; and *Ms.* magazine and the Feminist Majority Foundation.
http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rsaf20/19/1

06/03/2017

Safundi v.18.2 (April) out early! A special issue titled 'Sequins, Struggle & Self', guest edited by Nadia Davids and Bryce Lease, it features essays, interviews, and photo-essays on q***r politics and performance in the Western Cape. Contributors: Catherine Cole, Nadia Davids, April Sizemore-Barber, Bryce Lease, Madison Moore, Mark Gevisser, Zethu Matebeni, Siona O'Connell, and Glenton 'Liberty' Matthyse.
http://preview.tinyurl.com/jfwdjzr

18/01/2017

Starting the year well! SAFUNDI Volume 18.1 (January 2017) now online and shipped to subscribers. It features a roundtable on Mark Sanders's LEARNING ZULU, with contributions from Emily Apter, Mbongiseni Buthelezi, Carli Coetzee, Jacob Dlamini, Rachael Gilmour and Ato Quayson, and a response by Mark Sanders; also essays by Robert Egar and Myra Ann Houser (on Jan Smuts, Howard University, and African American Leadership, 1930), Philip Aghoghovwia (on the Karoo, fracking, and the literary imagination), Kirby Manià (on nature in Ivan Vladislavić's Johannesburg), and Aghogho Akpome (on visions of post-reconciliation South Africa in DISTRICT 9). Spread the word, and enjoy!
http://ow.ly/rJH530870W4

04/10/2016

Volume 17.4 (October 2016) just out, featuring an interview with South African novelist Eben Venter and essays on: the artist Dan Halter; vampire fictions set in Johannesburg; K.Sello Duiker and q***r futurity; AIDS and gender in the film *Yesterday*; apocalypticism in Smith Henderson; the history and nature of Canada-South Africa comparisons. Blood, meat, border-crossings, apocalypse.... material fit for the strangeness of this season. Enjoy! http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rsaf20/17/4?nav=tocList

16/06/2016

Hot on the heels of a fabulous 17.2 issue on affect and/in Africa, here's volume 17.3, a general issue with fascinating essays on: Richard Rive, Zoë Wicomb, and activism; teaching Toni Morrison in Charleston, SC: Miriam Makeba's marriage to Stokely Carmichael: and last but not least on Jan Smuts's dissertation on Walt Whitman...

01/06/2016

Out soon! Special issue, ably guest edited.

09/02/2016

Look what's coming in v17.1, out imminently...

17/12/2015

The final issue of SAFUNDI for 2015 (vol. 16, no. 4) is now out. It includes essays on: international norms and the ending of apartheid; Tsafendas, literary biography, and the archive; Hugh Tracey, ethnography, and African music; representations of Marikana and its aftermath in contemporary visual art; violence and desire in the art of Mlu Zondi, Zanele Muholi, and Makhosazana Xaba; and trans-cultural and oceanic identities in the work of Lindsey Collen. Also: reviews of books about Arthur Ashe and Civil Rights, American Jews and Apartheid, and Govan Mbeki and the ANCYL.

05/12/2015

In Memoriam Mark Behr, this interview from 2010/11, free to view until March 2016.

Mark Behr Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies Print Email Tweet Share Mark Behr, the Tanzanian-born South African novelist—author of The Smell of Apples (1995, originally published in Afrikaans as Die reuk van appels, 1993), Embrace (2000) and Kings of the Water (2009)—died su…

27/09/2015

A little late, but it's out: a fantastic volume 16.3, guest edited by Dana Phillips, featuring a roundtable of articles and responses to DJANGO UNCHAINED and the idea of the 'global Western', with essays by Michael K. Johnson, Neil Campbell, Hollis Robbins, and Johannes Fehrle, and responses from Lily Saint, Erica L. Ball, Veronica Fitzpatrick, Javier O'Neil-Ortiz, and Andrew Offenburger… Also a great essay by Nick Mulgrew on the South African restaurant chain SPUR and its iconography… and a review by Neville Hoad of the Cambridge Companion to Nelson Mandela.

http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rsaf20/16/3

05/06/2015

Recently published: v16.2, featuring Hermann Wittenberg on Coetzee in Hollywood, Julia Martin on Gary Snyder, Frankie Weaver on anti-apartheid solidarity networks, Phoenix Alexander on Lauren Beukes, Lara Atkin on Brett Bailey and nineteenth-century practices of ethnographic display/spectacle, and a roundtable tribute to the late Bernard Magubane, featuring Martin Legassick, Zine Magubane, Ntongela Masilela, Sifiso Ndlovu, and Tyler Fleming. Plus book reviews!

http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rsaf20/16/2 #/tic/rsaf20/current

03/03/2015

Gearing up for v16.2 (April), to include an essay on Coetzee's sojourn in Hollywood, a reappraisal of the anti-apartheid networks involved with the film COME BACK, AFRICA, and articles on Gary Snyder's mountains, Lauren Beukes' digital everywhere, and Brett Bailey's exhibited bodies…. watch this space!

05/02/2015

Safundi v.16.1 now out, including: Thomas McClendon & Pamela Scully on the South African Student Exchange Program in the US, constructive engagement, and anti-apartheid activism; Leon de K**k on "cultural difference" and postapartheid crime fiction; Stefan Helgesson on TJ/DOUBLE NEGATIVE (Goldblatt/Vladislavic); Shane Graham on Lauren Beukes and Henrietta Rose-Innes; and Graham Riach on Vladislavic and collage. Plus some great reviews, incl. Mark Sanders on Adam Sitze, etc. etc.

http://ow.ly/IxLnE

21/09/2014

Hot on the heals of v.15.2/3 (South African photography…free access through December http://ow.ly/BJAMk) comes v.15.4, with essays by Matthew Shum (on Robert Semple's 1803 Cape travel narrative), Mike Marais (on Damon Galgut), Helene Strauss (on video installations by Zanele Muholi and Berni Searle), and Michael Titlestad (on the South African afterlives of Country music great Jim Reeves). Out now, and online: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rsaf20/15/4

21/08/2014

Published at last! SAFUNDI's bumper special double-issue on South African Photography, guest editor Michael Godby, with articles on nineteenth-century portraiture, Catholic mission tableaux, South African soldiers in Italy in WW2, East Rand studios and black female subjectivities in the 1950s, dandies in SCOPE magazine in the '60s, images of District Six, and features on Santu Mofokeng, Cedric Nunn, Sabelo Mlangeni, David Goldblatt, Roelof van Wyk, and Broomberg & Chanarin. Also reviews of exhibitions and recent photography and film publications. Unmissable!

15/07/2014

One of Safundi's editors, Rita Barnard, talks here about another editorial project, her extraordinary Cambridge Companion to Nelson Mandela, out earlier this year.

"How could we avoid being overtaken by history?"

21/06/2014

This longlist includes Nadia Davids's "The Visit", republished in SAFUNDI 12.3/4 (2011). [see http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17533171.2011.586829 #.U6WCwhZgPwI]

Alert! Today, Books LIVE unveils the longlist for the Twenty in 20 project, a Twenty Years of Freedom initiative whose aim is to identify the best South African short stories published in English during the past two decades of democracy. The project, launched in May, began with a call to the publi…

22/03/2014

Hugh Masekela and Louis Armstrong's trumpet.

Growing up in apartheid South Africa, a future trumpet master found inspiration in Louis Armstrong's horn..

23/02/2014

SAFUNDI v.15 no. 1 (January 2014) is out now and includes: Chinua Thelwell on minstrelsy and racial uplift politics in South Africa in the 1890s, Deborah Seddon on teaching Toni Morrison in the post-apartheid classroom, Scott Schönfeldt-Aultman on a newsletter for expatriate South Africans in the US, James Gump on comparative third-force activities in South Africa and the US in the 1970s and '80s, Megan Paustian on Coetzee, Head, ethics and land. Also, a colloquium on David Schalkwyk's *Hamlet's Dreams*, with contributions from Daniel Roux, Jonathan Crewe, Anston Bosman, Sandra Young, Pier Paolo Frassinelli, and Natasha Distiller. And reviews of books on Zakes Mda, and on witchcraft.

07/11/2013

Anthony Boudain in South Africa. Discuss!

In a recent episode of his CNN "Parts Unknown," the American chef and writer Anthony Bourdain traveled to South Africa. In my mind at least, this episode was long overdue and in fact, I've even sai...

17/09/2013

And to whet your appetite for October's issue... look out for a symposium/roundtable on the film SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN, featuring essays & critique by a stellar line-up: Peter Cole, Stefan Helgesson, Jon Hyslop, Simon Lewsen, Timothy Rommen, Michael Titlestad, and David Watson.

Sony Pictures Classics presents 'Searching for Sugar Man'. A film a following the story of two South African fans who set out to find out what really happened to their hero, Rodriguez, the greatest '70s rock icon who never was. Coming this summer to a city near you.

15/09/2013

Our latest issue, v14.3 (July 2013), a little belatedly now online and in print, includes a featured essay by Stephen Clingman, with responses from Zolani Ngwane, Carrol Clarkson, Louise Bethlehem, and Alice Brittan. There are also essays on Communist cultural discourse in early apartheid South Africa, whiteness and family murder in late apartheid South Africa, cultures of resistance to conscription in the 1980s, and waste and Zoë Wicomb.
http://ow.ly/oT3NN

03/05/2013

NEW ISSUE: Safundi 14.2 (April 2013), with essays on: rugby and identity in former Model-C schools in South Africa; Kopano Matlwa and the dialectics of race; Mark Behr; Phaswane Mpe; aspiration and motion in contemporary South African fiction. http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rsaf20/current #.UYOBteB77ao

04/03/2013

Two of South Africa's finest writers, novelist Zoë Wicomb, and non-fiction author Jonny Steinberg, are amongst the winners of the inaugural Windham Campbell Prize, administered by Yale University. A reminder that SAFUNDI's vol 12, 3/4 (2011) was a special issue on WIcomb's work, and that a fine lead essay (with equally fine responses) on non-fiction in South Africa (including Steinberg's work) can be found in vol 13, 1/2 (2012).

Yale President-elect Peter Salovey reads the names of the inaugural winners of the Windham Campbell Prizes, which recognize outstanding achievement in fictio...

01/03/2013

NEW ISSUE: Safundi 14.1 (Jan 2013), w/ research on Olive Schreiner, Alex Haley's Roots, Coetzee/McCarthy, and others. http://ow.ly/i9C0Q

06/11/2012

On election day, Safundi remembers Prexy Nesbitt's "In Obama's Backyard" http://ow.ly/f4oD6

02/11/2012

Safundi readers: prefer your updates via Twitter? Follow for news related to the journal. http://ow.ly/eZbnI

25/10/2012

Now available: Safundi Volume 13, Numbers 3-4 (July-October 2012), "South African and American Music: Harmonies and Dissonances," co-edited by Tsitsi Jaji and Barbara Ching. http://ow.ly/eLzbi

05/10/2012

American-born photographer Roger Ballen talks about collaborating with South African musicians DIE ANTWOORD. A roundtable on DIE ANTWOORD, with contributions from Sean O'Toole, Liese van der Watt, Anton Krueger, and Adam Haupt, appears in the most recent issue of SAFUNDI, a special issue on Music.... more on which shortly.

The Mail & Guardian Online is South Africa's oldest quality news source on the web and Africa's first online newspaper, offering breaking news and in-depth, analytical features from South Africa, Africa and around the world.

12/09/2012

An edited extract from SAFUNDI editor Rita Barnard's chapter in PRINT, TEXT and BOOK CULTURES IN SOUTH AFRICA, about her role as South African literary expert for Oprah's Book Club...

Readers across the Atlantic view Paton's classic in different ways

05/09/2012

SAFUNDI readers in or near Johannesburg next week are welcome to the launch of PRINT, TEXT & BOOK CULTURES IN SOUTH AFRICA, featuring work by two of SAFUNDI's editors, and several of the journal's contributors.

05/09/2012

Editor Rita Barnard in conversation in Cape Town recently with past contributor to SAFUNDI, Lucy Graham, about Lucy's monograph, STATE OF PERIL.

‘White obsession’ with ‘Black Peril’ makes for a grim history

05/06/2012

Safundi members should take note of next year's African Literature Association conference, "Literature, Liberation, and the Law," March 20-24, 2013, in Charleston, South Carolina. From the ALA organizers: "From its inception the ALA has embraced the cause of liberation in Africa and the diaspora. Hosting the 39th annual conference in Charleston, SC in 2013, in the midst of Charleston’s four-year arc of commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War, and coincident with the 50th anniversaries of the Civil Rights movement and the decade of African decolonization, allows the ALA to further its important intellectual and political contribution by contesting memory locally, nationally, and internationally." For more: http://claw.cofc.edu/ala/conference.html

Conveners: Simon Lewis (College of Charleston) and Mary P. Battle (College of Charleston)Conference Committee: Abdellatif Attafi, Viviane Bekrou, Tim Carmichael, Jack Parson, Assan Sarr, John Walsh, John White (all College of Charleston), and Deborah Gammons (Charleston School of Law).

17/03/2012

Free access to Rita Barnard's introduction to SAFUNDI 13.1/2, a special issue: "Beyond Rivalry: Literature/History, Fiction/Non-Fiction". It's a great issue, with essays by Hedley Twidle, Rob Nixon, Stephen Clingman, Jon Hyslop, Gary Baines, Dalglish Chew; a "Roundtable" on the film *Invictus*; and review essays by Rita Barnard, Adam Sitze, and Dan Wylie.

(2012). Beyond Rivalry: Literature/History, Fiction/Non‐Fiction. Safundi: Vol. 13, Beyond Rivalry: Literature/History, Fiction/Non-Fiction, pp. 1-4. doi: 10.1080/17533171.2011.642585