Anna Van Urk, Corpus Christi

Biographical Information

I graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand with a BA in English and History in 2021, and a BA (Hons) in English in 2023. I completed my MPhil in English Studies (with distinction) at Corpus Christi College at the University of Cambridge in 2024, with a dissertation examining Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s and Kamau Brathwaite’s treatments of Dante Alighieri as an ‘interlocutor’ who championed minority literatures. My current research examines the popularity of the Divine Comedy among various postcolonial African and Caribbean authors, including Aimé Césaire, Nuruddin Farah, and Lorna Goodison.

My studies are generously supported by a Cambridge Trust Scholarship and the Jebb Studentship. 

Research Interests

Comparative literature, post- and anticolonial literature and theory, Dante Alighieri, South African literature, utopia, Blochian Marxism.

Selected Publications

 'A Proletarian Pastoral? A Class-Based Analysis of Dante's Illustrious Vernacular and the Dantean Eclogues' in English Studies in Africa, 69:2. (Forthcoming, 2026)

'On Epidemics, Epigrams and Roshila Nair’s 'Fanon’s land” in Liberation Diaries Volume 2: Reflections on Thirty Years of Democracy in South Africa, published by Jacana Media (Pty Ltd), ed. Busani Ngcaweni (2024)

“Good’ South African Literature: The Booker Prize, its Obsession with the Postcolonial and Damon Galgut’s The Promise' in English Studies in Africa, 66:2. (2023)

Conferences:

'Pedagogy of the Oppressed: A Comparative Exploration of Dante’s ‘Untutored’ Vernacular and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s ‘Expression of the Peasant," presented at the International Medieval Congress (IMC), Leeds, July 2025. 

"The wise would turn from the babble of the squares:’A Class-Based Analysis of Dante’s Illustrious Vernacular,' presented at the SASMARS (South African Society for Medieval and Renaissance Studies) 26th Biennial Conference, Stellenbosch, August 2024.