226pp., illus., paperback, Johannesburg, 2023
A collection of essays on the work of Isabel Hofmeyr’s studies of transnational histories of the book, African print cultures, and cultural circulations in the Indian Ocean world. Hofmeyr is Professor Emeritus at the University of the Witwatersrand and Global Distinguished Professor at New York University. She is co-editor of Ten Books That Shaped the British Empire: Creating an imperial commons and author ofDockside Reading, hydro colonialism and the Custom House and Gandhi’s Printing Press: Experiments in slow reading.
"The wide range of analytical and reflective pieces in this collection affords us the pleasure of discovering that we have not received Hofmeyr’s work as individuals, but as part of a large and dedicated international community. It is a wondrous gift." Ato Quayson is the Jean G. and Morris M. Doyle Professor in Interdisciplinary Studies and Professor of English at Stanford University, California
Contributions include:
"Southern Lodestar: Isabel Hofmeyr’s life and work" by Charne Lavery
"Transformations" by Khwezi Mkhize
"African Popular Literatures Rising" by James Ogude
"Fluidity and Its Methodological Openings: Mobility and discourse on the eve of colonialism" by Carolyn Hamilton
"Oral Genres and Home-Grown Print Culture" by Karin Barber
"Hemispheric Limits: Rethinking the uses of Diaspora from South Africa" by Christopher EW Ouma
'Seeing Waters Afresh: Working with Isabel Hofmeyr" by Lakshmi Subramanian
"‘The Sea’s Watery Volume’: More-than-book ontologies and the making of empire history" by Antoinette Burton
"Amphibious Form: Southern print cultures on Indian Ocean shores" by Meg Samuelson
"Travel Disruptions: Irritability and Canonisation" by Danai S Mupotsa and Pumla Dineo Gqola
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.
Sarah Nuttall is Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies and Director of WISER at the University of the Witwatersrand. Her books include Entanglement: Literary and cultural reflections on postapartheid and Johannesburg: The elusive metropolis.