Reading from the South

Charne Lavery is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Pretoria and Co-director of the Oceanic Humanities for the Global South project based at WISER, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.Sarah Nuttall is Director of the Wits Institute for Social & Economic Research (WiSER) at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Charne Lavery is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Pretoria and Co-director of the Oceanic Humanities for the Global South project based at WISER, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.Sarah Nuttall is Director of the Wits Institute for Social & Economic Research (WiSER) at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Sunil Amrith is the Renu and Anand Dhawan Professor of History at Yale University. He is author of Unruly Waters. Gabeba Baderoon is a literary scholar, poet and Associate Professor of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and African Studies at Pennsylvania State University, where she also co-directs the African Feminist Initiative. She is the author of Regarding Muslims: from Slavery to Post-apartheid and four books of poetry, most recently The History of Intimacy. Karin Barber is Emeritus Professor of African Cultural Anthropology at the University of Birmingham and Visiting Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics. Her publications include A History of African Popular Culture. Rimli Bhattacharya is the author of 'The Dancing Poet': Rabindranath Tagore and Choreographies of Participation. Antoinette Burton is Professor of History at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She collaborated with Isabel Hofmeyr on Ten Books That Shaped the British Empire: Creating the Imperial Commons.Pumla Dineo Gqola is Professor in the Department of African Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Carolyn Hamilton is the South African Research Chair in Archive and Public Culture at the University of Cape Town. She is the author of Terrific Majesty, and co-editor of Refiguring the Archive, The Cambridge History of South Africa and Babel Unbound. Khwezi Mkhize is Lecturer in the Department of African Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and co-editor of the journal African Studies. He is the author of numerous essays and co-editor of Foundational African Writers: Peter Abrahams, Noni Jabavu, Sibusiso Nyembezi and Es'kia Mphahlele. Danai S Mupotsa teaches in the Department of African Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. James Ogude is the Director of the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship at the University of Pretoria. He is Professor of African Literature and Cultures and edited Ubuntu and the Reconstitution of Community. Christopher EW Ouma is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Cape Town. Ouma is the author of Childhood in Contemporary Diasporic African Literature: Memories and Futures Past. Ranka Primorac is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Southampton, United Kingdom. She is author of The Place of Tears. Madhumita Lahiri is Associate Professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is the author of Imperfect Solidarities: Tagore, Gandhi, Du Bois, and the Global Anglophone. Meg Samuelson is Associate Professor in the Department of English and Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide and Associate Professor Extraordinaire at Stellenbosch University. Lakshmi Subramanian is Research Professor at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences in Calcutta, India. She is the author of Three Merchants of Bombay and A History of India 1707–1857.

• List of illustrationsAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Southern Lodestar: Isabel Hofmeyr’s Life and Work – Charne LaveryPart I High, Low and In-betweenChapter 1 Transformations – Khwezi MkhizeChapter 2 African Popular Literatures Rising – James OgudeChapter 3 Fluidity and Its Methodological Openings: Mobility and Discourse on the Eve of Colonialism – Carolyn HamiltonChapter 4 Oral Genres and Home-Grown Print Culture – Karin BarberPart II Portable MethodsChapter 5 Overcomers: A Historical Sketch – Ranka PrimoracChapter 6 Hemispheric Limits: Rethinking the Uses of Diaspora from South Africa – Christopher EW OumaChapter 7 What’s the Rush? Slow Reading, Summary and A Brief History of Seven Killings – Madhumita LahiriChapter 8 Seeing Waters Afresh: Working with Isabel Hofmeyr – Lakshmi SubramanianPart III Oceanic TurnsChapter 9 A Turn to the Indian Ocean – Sunil AmrithChapter 10 ‘The Sea’s Watery Volume’: More-than-Book Ontologies and the Making of Empire History – Antoinette BurtonChapter 11 Amphibious Form: Southern Print Cultures on Indian Ocean Shores – Meg SamuelsonChapter 12 Wood and Water: Resonances from the Indian Ocean – Rimli BhattacharyaPart IV Closing ReflectionsChapter 13 Travel Disruptions: Irritability and Canonisation – Danai S Mupotsa and Pumla Dineo GqolaProximate – Gabeba BaderoonContributors Index