Dr Christopher Warnes, St John's

<cgw26@cam.ac.uk>

Biographical Information:

I was born in Zimbabwe and grew up in South Africa. I studied at the Universities of Cape Town (BA, 1994) and Kwazulu-Natal (MA, 1999) before coming to Cambridge for a PhD (2004) thanks to funding from the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust. I was a lecturer in the English Department at Stellenbosch University from 2004-2006 before taking up my current post. Broadly, I am interested in the theory and practice of studying postcolonial and related literatures, especially those from Africa. Beyond research and teaching, I have contributed to this field in several ways. I was the inaugural chair of the Postcolonial Studies Association, and serve on its Advisory Board. I am on the Editorial Boards of Journal of African Cultural Studies, the Cambridge Centre of African Studies Series (Ohio University Press) and the Literature and Globalisation Series (Continuum). I serve on the Management Board of the Centre of African Studies and in 2010-11 I co-ordinated the Leverhulme/Isaac Newton Trust sponsored Cambridge-Africa Research Collaboration on the theme 'Myth and Modernity in African Literatures'. 

Research Interests:

African literature; postcolonial studies; the novel; digital culture.

Areas of Graduate Supervision:

I am interested in supervising graduate work on topics related to West or Southern African literatures and cultures. I am always happy to consider innovative proposals on comparative postcolonial topics, revisionary perspectives on the history of the novel, and postcolonial or materialist approaches to digital cultural production.

See Dr Christopher Warnes's entry in the University Lookup database. (Raven login required)

Selected Publications

· “Writing Crime in the New South Africa: Negotiating Threat in the Novels of Deon Meyer and Margie Orford”. Journal of Southern African Studies, forthcoming, 2013.

· “Desired State: Black Economic Empowerment and the South African Popular Romance.” Popular Culture in Africa: the Episteme of the Everyday. Stephanie Newell and Onookome Okome (eds), forthcoming, Routledge, 2013.

· "Postcolonial Writing in South Africa". The Cambridge History of Postcolonial Literature, ed. Ato Quayson. Cambridge University Press, 2012. 329-351

·  "Everyone is Guilty: Complicitous Critique and the Plaasroman Tradition in Etienne van Heerden’s Toorberg". Research in African Literatures. 42.1 (2011): 120-132.

·  "Welcome to Msawawa: The Postapartheid Township in Niq Mhlongo's Novels of Deception". Journal of Postcolonial Writing 47.4 (2011): 546-557

 ·  "Interview with Ivan Vladislavic". Marginal Spaces: On Ivan Vladislavic, ed. Gerald Gaylard. Johannesburg: WITS University Press, 2011. Originally published in Modern Fiction Studies 46.1 (2000): 273–281.

 ·   Magical Realism and the Postcolonial Novel: Between Faith and Irreverence. Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

 ·  "The Afrikaans Novel". The Cambridge Companion to the African Novel, ed. F Abiola Irele. Cambridge University Press, 2009. 69-83.

·  "Chronicles of Belief and Unbelief: Zakes Mda and the Question of Magical Realism in South African Literature.” Ways of Writing: Critical Essays on Zakes Mda, ed. David Bell and Johan Jacobs. Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2009. 73-90.

·  "Zakes Mda”. British Writers, XV, ed. Jay Parini. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2009. 195-208.


·  "Magical Realism and the Legacy of German Idealism". Modern Language Review 101.2 (2006): 488-498.

·  "Avatars of Amadis: Magical Realism as Postcolonial Romance". Journal of Commonwealth Literature 40.3 (2005): 7-20.

·  "The Hermeneutics of Vagueness: Magical Realism in Current Literary Critical Discourse". Journal of Postcolonial Writing 41.1 (2005): 1-13

·  "Naturalizing the Supernatural: Faith, Irreverence and Magical Realism". Literature Compass 2 (2005): 1-16.

·  "Baldur's Gate and History: Race and Alignment in Digital Role-Playing Games". Proceedings of the Second International Digital Games Research Association Conference, Simon Fraser University International Repository, 2005.

·  "Engendering the Post-Apartheid Farm Novel: Anne Landsmann's 'The Devil's Chimney". English Academy Review (South Africa) 21 (2004): 17-31.

·  "The Making and Unmaking of History in Ivan Vladislavic's Propaganda by Monuments and Other Stories". Modern Fiction Studies 46.1 (2000): 67-89.