Diana Adesola Mafe
Biographic Data
| ID | 1717289 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Diana Adesola Mafe |
| GIVEN NAMES | Diana Adesola |
| FAMILY NAME | Mafe |
| SIGNATURE | MAFE D A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Denison University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 6 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 13 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Breaking molds, making history
Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Prince-Bythewood, "With 'The Woman King,'" A.frame, September 14, 2022.2 Coleman, "There's a True Story Behind Black Panther's Strong Women," Time, February 22, 2018.3 Hall, "Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation," 68–82; Diawara, "Black Spectatorship," 66–79; hooks, Black Looks.4 hooks, Black Looks, 116.5 Prince-Bythewood, "Gina Prince-Bythewood o…
The (woman) kingdoms of Dahomey and Wakanda
Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 See Safundi volume 20 issue 1 (2019) for a roundtable discussion of the first Black Panther film and its global impact.2 The phrase "With great power comes great responsibility," a familiar adage in the twenty-first-century zeitgeist, first appeared in Marvel Comics' Amazing Fantasy #15 (1962) and is generally associated with the character Spider-Man.Additi…
Phoenix Rising
This essay focuses on Nnedi Okorafor’s 2015 novel The Book of Phoenix and reads the black female protagonist and narrator, Phoenix Okore, as a powerful metaphor for a radical twenty-first-century black feminist politics and a signifier of the contemporary social movement Say Her Name. Phoenix is the product of experimentation, “a slurry of African DNA and cells” (146) who is birthed by an African American surrogate mother and then raised in a lab…
Where No Black Woman Has Gone Before
When Lieutenant Uhura took her place on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise on Star Trek, the actress Nichelle Nichols went where no African American woman had ever gone before. Yet several decades passed before many other black women began playing significant roles in speculative (i.e., science fiction, fantasy, and horror) film and television—a troubling omission, given that these genres offer significant opportunities for reinventing social …
Speculative Blackness
Reviewed by: Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction by André M. Carrington Diana Mafe andré m. carrington. Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2016. 304 pp. $25.00. Book-length studies on blackness in speculative fiction and media remain few, and andré m. carrington’s Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction is a welcome addition. carrington grounds…
Race and the First-Person Shooter
This article argues that the 2013 first-person shooter (FPS) video game BioShock Infinite (2K Games) challenges gamers in its representations of race. Launched in 2007, the BioShock franchise has a reputation for thoughtful dystopian narratives, beautiful retro worlds, and addictive gameplay. As the latest installment in an award-winning franchise, BioShock Infinite entices players on reputation alone. Although the game's marketing presents it as…
It's the Master! (Step in Time)
We Don't Need Another Hero
This article reads the comic-book series Y: The Last Man as a subversive articulation of critical race and feminist discourses despite the guise of Eurocentricity and the pretext of a white male "protagonist." I argue that the true protagonist of the series is the black female character Agent 355, an unconventional hero who complicates stereotypical representations of race, gender, class, and so on. Despite a post-apocalyptic setting where the ma…
British and African Literature in Transnational Context
(Mis)Imagining Africa in the New Millennium
Diana Adesola Mafe is an assistant professor of English at Denison University, where she teaches courses in postcolonial, gender, and black studies. She has published articles in Research in African Literatures, American Drama, English Academy Review, Frontiers, and Safundi. She has a new piece in the anthology African Women Writing Resistance, and she is currently revising her dissertation on the “tragic mulatto” in contemporary African literatu…
A Portrait of the (Tortured) Artist as a Young (Coloured) Man
And I hybrid, after Mendel, growing between the wire and the wall, being dogsbody, being me, buffer you still.1 1 Nortje, “Dogsbody Half-Breed”, 345. No presentation of Arthur Nortje could separate
Misplaced Bodies
Misplaced BodiesProbing Racial and Gender Signifiers in Ngozi Onwurah’s The Body Beautiful Diana Adesola Mafe (bio) Exalted by poets, painters and sculptors, the female body, often reduced to its isolated parts, has been mankind’s most popular subject for adoration and myth, and also for judgment, ridicule, esthetic alteration and violent abuse. Susan Brownmiller, Femininity1 In her seminal text Femininity, Susan Brownmiller identifies what can s…
From g n to Othello
The link between Shakespeare and Africa is consistently addressed through the play Othello, in its depiction of a black protagonist and its reflection of early modern travel literature. Building upon existing scholarship, this paper moves beyond generic readings of "Africa" to explore the specific parallels between Othello and Yoruba culture/myth and to establish the intertextuality of those respective traditions. Using Leo Africanus's A Geograph…
(Mis)Imagining Africa in the New Millennium
Diana Adesola Mafe is an assistant professor of English at Denison University, where she teaches courses in postcolonial, gender, and black studies. She has published articles in Research in African Literatures, American Drama, English Academy Review, Frontiers, and Safundi. She has a new piece in the anthology African Women Writing Resistance, and she is currently revising her dissertation on the “tragic mulatto” in contemporary African literatu…
It's the Master! (Step in Time)
A Portrait of the (Tortured) Artist as a Young (Coloured) Man
And I hybrid, after Mendel, growing between the wire and the wall, being dogsbody, being me, buffer you still.1 1 Nortje, “Dogsbody Half-Breed”, 345. No presentation of Arthur Nortje could separate
From g n to Othello
The link between Shakespeare and Africa is consistently addressed through the play Othello, in its depiction of a black protagonist and its reflection of early modern travel literature. Building upon existing scholarship, this paper moves beyond generic readings of "Africa" to explore the specific parallels between Othello and Yoruba culture/myth and to establish the intertextuality of those respective traditions. Using Leo Africanus's A Geograph…
A Portrait of the (Tortured) Artist as a Young (Coloured) Man
And I hybrid, after Mendel, growing between the wire and the wall, being dogsbody, being me, buffer you still.1 1 Nortje, “Dogsbody Half-Breed”, 345. No presentation of Arthur Nortje could separate
Misplaced Bodies
Misplaced BodiesProbing Racial and Gender Signifiers in Ngozi Onwurah’s The Body Beautiful Diana Adesola Mafe (bio) Exalted by poets, painters and sculptors, the female body, often reduced to its isolated parts, has been mankind’s most popular subject for adoration and myth, and also for judgment, ridicule, esthetic alteration and violent abuse. Susan Brownmiller, Femininity1 In her seminal text Femininity, Susan Brownmiller identifies what can s…
(Mis)Imagining Africa in the New Millennium
Diana Adesola Mafe is an assistant professor of English at Denison University, where she teaches courses in postcolonial, gender, and black studies. She has published articles in Research in African Literatures, American Drama, English Academy Review, Frontiers, and Safundi. She has a new piece in the anthology African Women Writing Resistance, and she is currently revising her dissertation on the “tragic mulatto” in contemporary African literatu…
British and African Literature in Transnational Context
Race and the First-Person Shooter
This article argues that the 2013 first-person shooter (FPS) video game BioShock Infinite (2K Games) challenges gamers in its representations of race. Launched in 2007, the BioShock franchise has a reputation for thoughtful dystopian narratives, beautiful retro worlds, and addictive gameplay. As the latest installment in an award-winning franchise, BioShock Infinite entices players on reputation alone. Although the game's marketing presents it as…
It's the Master! (Step in Time)
We Don't Need Another Hero
This article reads the comic-book series Y: The Last Man as a subversive articulation of critical race and feminist discourses despite the guise of Eurocentricity and the pretext of a white male "protagonist." I argue that the true protagonist of the series is the black female character Agent 355, an unconventional hero who complicates stereotypical representations of race, gender, class, and so on. Despite a post-apocalyptic setting where the ma…
Speculative Blackness
Reviewed by: Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction by André M. Carrington Diana Mafe andré m. carrington. Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2016. 304 pp. $25.00. Book-length studies on blackness in speculative fiction and media remain few, and andré m. carrington’s Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction is a welcome addition. carrington grounds…
Where No Black Woman Has Gone Before
When Lieutenant Uhura took her place on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise on Star Trek, the actress Nichelle Nichols went where no African American woman had ever gone before. Yet several decades passed before many other black women began playing significant roles in speculative (i.e., science fiction, fantasy, and horror) film and television—a troubling omission, given that these genres offer significant opportunities for reinventing social …
Phoenix Rising
This essay focuses on Nnedi Okorafor’s 2015 novel The Book of Phoenix and reads the black female protagonist and narrator, Phoenix Okore, as a powerful metaphor for a radical twenty-first-century black feminist politics and a signifier of the contemporary social movement Say Her Name. Phoenix is the product of experimentation, “a slurry of African DNA and cells” (146) who is birthed by an African American surrogate mother and then raised in a lab…
Breaking molds, making history
Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Prince-Bythewood, "With 'The Woman King,'" A.frame, September 14, 2022.2 Coleman, "There's a True Story Behind Black Panther's Strong Women," Time, February 22, 2018.3 Hall, "Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation," 68–82; Diawara, "Black Spectatorship," 66–79; hooks, Black Looks.4 hooks, Black Looks, 116.5 Prince-Bythewood, "Gina Prince-Bythewood o…
The (woman) kingdoms of Dahomey and Wakanda
Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 See Safundi volume 20 issue 1 (2019) for a roundtable discussion of the first Black Panther film and its global impact.2 The phrase "With great power comes great responsibility," a familiar adage in the twenty-first-century zeitgeist, first appeared in Marvel Comics' Amazing Fantasy #15 (1962) and is generally associated with the character Spider-Man.Additi…
Art (11 works) · History (10 works) · Literature (9 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Art history (6 works) · Gender Studies (6 works) · History (6 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies (5 works) · Gender Studies (4 works)