Rebecca Fasselt
Biographic Data
| ID | 3743124 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rebecca Fasselt |
| GIVEN NAMES | Rebecca |
| FAMILY NAME | Fasselt |
| SIGNATURE | FASSELT R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Pretoria |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8011-0266 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 27 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
African Literature in Transition: The Archive of African Literature, 1800–2000
This book offers a compelling new approach to African literatures as formed by and itself a form of collective memory. It explores the historical spaces and maps that African literature brings to the surface and re-imagines in novel ways. The stories that matter about what happened in the past together constitute a collective memory that African writers and readers draw upon to locate themselves within the world. The book examines the mental maps…
Migrant City: Mapping Literary Johannesburg across (Southern) Africa
This chapter offers a brief historical overview of selected works by A. S. Mopeli-Paulus, Legson Kayira, Charles Mungoshi, Aldino Muianga, Miriam Tlali, and Yvonne Vera to foreground the historical and material presence of migrants from other Southern African countries in Johannesburg’s literary archive. Tracing trajectories of change and continuity in the post-apartheid migrant city, the chapter shows how South African texts have shifted from em…
African urbanisms and their hinterlands: Contemporary Cultural Imaginaries of Spatial Connections
Appeals to shared Africanness: Negotiating precarious childhoods and intra-African migration in two coming-of-age narratives in contemporary South Africa
Child and youth migration has not only been marginalized within scholarship on literary engagements with global migratory processes, but has also, for the most part, been studied in the narrow context of movements from the Global South to the Global North. This essay examines the complex dynamics of child and youth migration manifest in narratives of migration to South Africa from elsewhere on the African continent. Focusing on the coming-of-age …
Clandestine crossings: Narrating Zimbabwe's precarious diaspora in South Africa in Sue Nyathi'sThe Gold-Diggers(2018)
While there is a growing interest in Zimbabwean literature about diasporic experiences in the UK and the USA, scholarship on literary engagements with the Zimbabwean diaspora in South Africa remains sparse. This article analyses clandestine migration from Zimbabwe to South Africa and the formation of a precarious diaspora in the host country as represented in Sue Nyathi's 2018 novel The Gold-Diggers. In contrast to strategies seen in South-North …
Crossing genre boundaries: H. J. Golakai's Afropolitan chick-lit mysteries
Crime fiction by women writers across the globe has in recent years begun to explore the position of women detectives within post-feminist cultural contexts, moving away from the explicit refusal of the heterosexual romance plot in earlier feminist ‘hard-boiled’ fiction. In this article, I analyse Hawa Jande Golakai's The Lazarus Effect (2011) and The Score (2015) as part of the tradition of crime fiction by women writers in South Africa. Joining…
Decolonizing the reading landscape: A conversation with Kgauhelo Dube
Reading and literacy projects in South Africa have a long and fascinating history. In this conversation, Kgauhelo Dube talks about a contemporary Pretoria-based initiative which seeks to promote reading and literacy through the showcasing of African authors and texts. The discussion explores some of the social and material dynamics which inform the post-apartheid reading project, including the lack of reading and library facilities in township se…
The short story in South Africa post-2000: Critical reflections on a genre in transition
This editorial offers critical reflections on short story writing in South Africa post-2000. Against the background of critical scholarship on the short story form and thematic trends of short story anthologies since the late 1980s, we argue that short story criticism on apartheid as well as contemporary South African short story writing has consistently emphasized the genre’s disposition to capture the fragmented realities of socio-political tra…
Democracy at home in South Africa: Family fictions and transitional culture, by Kerry Bystrom
Democracy at Home in South Africa is an invaluable inquiry into the complex figurations of South African transitional culture through the tropes of family and home in literary and artistic expressi
Versatile kinship: Trans-African family formations and postcolonial disillusionment in Niq Mhlongo'sAfter Tears
Much of the existing scholarship on Niq Mhlongo’s works has engaged with the author’s portrayal of township life and his use of humour and deceit to address pressing contemporary socio-economic issues. This article examines the constructions and contestations of belonging in his novel After Tears with particular focus on the trope of the family and its reconstruction through multiple engagements with migrants from other parts of Africa. Reading t…
Where to Locate the Self? Gendered Hospitality, African Immigration and White Self-Renewal in Nadine Gordimer’s The Pickup
This article reads Nadine Gordimer’s preoccupation with migration in her 2001 novel The Pickup through the metaphor of hospitality. In doing so, it draws links and inaugurates a dialogue with a worldwide debate in which scholars of various disciplines and backgrounds are concerned with the philosophy and ethics of hospitality towards migrants. My attention lies on the interconnectedness of political and public discourses and private, everyday pra…
Towards a “New Africanity”: Southern Connectivities and Lusofonia in Imraan Coovadia’s Alternate History in The Institute for Taxi Poetry
One of the central developments in post-transitional South African literature has been a seeming shift towards an increasing transnational connectivity, as well as an incipient dialogue with other parts of the African continent. This article reads Imraan Coovadia’s 2012 novel, The Institute for Taxi Poetry, as part of a larger body of works that demonstrates a rethinking of the country’s “Africanity” (Smith 2012 Smith, Tymon. 2012. “The Fiction P…
Making and Unmaking 'African Foreignness: African Settings, African Migrants and the Migrant Detective in Contemporary South African Crime Fiction
This article aims to examine the portrayal of African migrants and South Africa’s relationship to the African continent in post-apartheid crime fiction. Exotic settings and the figure of the stranger have featured in the crime genre since its emergence in the 19th century. Reading Mike Nicol’s The Ibis Tapestry (1998), his trilogy Payback (2008), Killer Country (2010) and Black Heart (2011), and H.J. Golakai’s novel The Lazarus Effect (2011), thi…
(Post)Colonial We-Narratives and the "Writing Back" Paradigm: Joseph Conrad's The Nigger of the "Narcissus" and Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o's A Grain of Wheat
This article considers how postcolonial narratives written partly in the first-person plural collective voice reflect recent critical developments in postcolonial studies rather than echoing the outmoded "writing back" paradigm. Even colonial texts such as Joseph Conrad's The Nigger of the "Narcissus," according to narratologists the earliest example of extensive we-narration to which postcolonial authors respond, dramatize the inherent multiplic…
A “Touch of Africa”: Liberal bildung through an encounter with African immigrants in Andrew Brown's Refuge
This article engages with the emergence of a “reconstructed liberalism” (Blair 2012) in South African fiction published after 2000 through a reading of Andrew Brown's 2009 novel, Refuge. The novel, I argue, forms part of a body of fiction that views post-apartheid immigration from elsewhere on the African continent to South Africa through a predominantly liberal perspective. Reading Brown's novel through the framework of the liberal Bildungsroman…
“Opening up to the Rest of Africa”: Continental Connections and Literary (Dis) Continuities in Simão Kikamba’s Going Home and Jonathan Nkala’s The Crossing
This article focuses on Simão Kikamba’s semi-autobiographical novel Going Home (2005) and Jonathan Khumbulani Nkala’s one-man drama The Crossing (2009). Both texts chronicle the odyssey of the refugee author or narrator – in Kikamba’s text from Angola and in Nkala’s drama from Zimbabwe – to South Africa. I argue that although these works picture the growing transnational texture of the South African national space, this apparent continental conne…
I’m not Afropolitan — I’m of the Continent”: A conversation with Yewande Omotoso
Since the end of apartheid, South Africa has become a new home for many immigrants and refugees from all over the African continent. Engaging with this “new season of migration to the South”, 1 South African writers are increasingly including migrants from elsewhere on the continent into their casts of protagonists. Moreover, in autobiographies and works of fiction, African migrants themselves have begun to reflect on their experiences of living …
I’m not Afropolitan — I’m of the Continent”: A conversation with Yewande Omotoso
Since the end of apartheid, South Africa has become a new home for many immigrants and refugees from all over the African continent. Engaging with this “new season of migration to the South”, 1 South African writers are increasingly including migrants from elsewhere on the continent into their casts of protagonists. Moreover, in autobiographies and works of fiction, African migrants themselves have begun to reflect on their experiences of living …
Clandestine crossings: Narrating Zimbabwe's precarious diaspora in South Africa in Sue Nyathi'sThe Gold-Diggers(2018)
While there is a growing interest in Zimbabwean literature about diasporic experiences in the UK and the USA, scholarship on literary engagements with the Zimbabwean diaspora in South Africa remains sparse. This article analyses clandestine migration from Zimbabwe to South Africa and the formation of a precarious diaspora in the host country as represented in Sue Nyathi's 2018 novel The Gold-Diggers. In contrast to strategies seen in South-North …
The short story in South Africa post-2000: Critical reflections on a genre in transition
This editorial offers critical reflections on short story writing in South Africa post-2000. Against the background of critical scholarship on the short story form and thematic trends of short story anthologies since the late 1980s, we argue that short story criticism on apartheid as well as contemporary South African short story writing has consistently emphasized the genre’s disposition to capture the fragmented realities of socio-political tra…
Decolonizing the reading landscape: A conversation with Kgauhelo Dube
Reading and literacy projects in South Africa have a long and fascinating history. In this conversation, Kgauhelo Dube talks about a contemporary Pretoria-based initiative which seeks to promote reading and literacy through the showcasing of African authors and texts. The discussion explores some of the social and material dynamics which inform the post-apartheid reading project, including the lack of reading and library facilities in township se…
(Post)Colonial We-Narratives and the "Writing Back" Paradigm: Joseph Conrad's The Nigger of the "Narcissus" and Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o's A Grain of Wheat
This article considers how postcolonial narratives written partly in the first-person plural collective voice reflect recent critical developments in postcolonial studies rather than echoing the outmoded "writing back" paradigm. Even colonial texts such as Joseph Conrad's The Nigger of the "Narcissus," according to narratologists the earliest example of extensive we-narration to which postcolonial authors respond, dramatize the inherent multiplic…
Versatile kinship: Trans-African family formations and postcolonial disillusionment in Niq Mhlongo'sAfter Tears
Much of the existing scholarship on Niq Mhlongo’s works has engaged with the author’s portrayal of township life and his use of humour and deceit to address pressing contemporary socio-economic issues. This article examines the constructions and contestations of belonging in his novel After Tears with particular focus on the trope of the family and its reconstruction through multiple engagements with migrants from other parts of Africa. Reading t…
Making and Unmaking 'African Foreignness: African Settings, African Migrants and the Migrant Detective in Contemporary South African Crime Fiction
This article aims to examine the portrayal of African migrants and South Africa’s relationship to the African continent in post-apartheid crime fiction. Exotic settings and the figure of the stranger have featured in the crime genre since its emergence in the 19th century. Reading Mike Nicol’s The Ibis Tapestry (1998), his trilogy Payback (2008), Killer Country (2010) and Black Heart (2011), and H.J. Golakai’s novel The Lazarus Effect (2011), thi…
A “Touch of Africa”: Liberal bildung through an encounter with African immigrants in Andrew Brown's Refuge
This article engages with the emergence of a “reconstructed liberalism” (Blair 2012) in South African fiction published after 2000 through a reading of Andrew Brown's 2009 novel, Refuge. The novel, I argue, forms part of a body of fiction that views post-apartheid immigration from elsewhere on the African continent to South Africa through a predominantly liberal perspective. Reading Brown's novel through the framework of the liberal Bildungsroman…
“Opening up to the Rest of Africa”: Continental Connections and Literary (Dis) Continuities in Simão Kikamba’s Going Home and Jonathan Nkala’s The Crossing
This article focuses on Simão Kikamba’s semi-autobiographical novel Going Home (2005) and Jonathan Khumbulani Nkala’s one-man drama The Crossing (2009). Both texts chronicle the odyssey of the refugee author or narrator – in Kikamba’s text from Angola and in Nkala’s drama from Zimbabwe – to South Africa. I argue that although these works picture the growing transnational texture of the South African national space, this apparent continental conne…
I’m not Afropolitan — I’m of the Continent”: A conversation with Yewande Omotoso
Since the end of apartheid, South Africa has become a new home for many immigrants and refugees from all over the African continent. Engaging with this “new season of migration to the South”, 1 South African writers are increasingly including migrants from elsewhere on the continent into their casts of protagonists. Moreover, in autobiographies and works of fiction, African migrants themselves have begun to reflect on their experiences of living …
A “Touch of Africa”: Liberal bildung through an encounter with African immigrants in Andrew Brown's Refuge
This article engages with the emergence of a “reconstructed liberalism” (Blair 2012) in South African fiction published after 2000 through a reading of Andrew Brown's 2009 novel, Refuge. The novel, I argue, forms part of a body of fiction that views post-apartheid immigration from elsewhere on the African continent to South Africa through a predominantly liberal perspective. Reading Brown's novel through the framework of the liberal Bildungsroman…
Where to Locate the Self? Gendered Hospitality, African Immigration and White Self-Renewal in Nadine Gordimer’s The Pickup
This article reads Nadine Gordimer’s preoccupation with migration in her 2001 novel The Pickup through the metaphor of hospitality. In doing so, it draws links and inaugurates a dialogue with a worldwide debate in which scholars of various disciplines and backgrounds are concerned with the philosophy and ethics of hospitality towards migrants. My attention lies on the interconnectedness of political and public discourses and private, everyday pra…
Towards a “New Africanity”: Southern Connectivities and Lusofonia in Imraan Coovadia’s Alternate History in The Institute for Taxi Poetry
One of the central developments in post-transitional South African literature has been a seeming shift towards an increasing transnational connectivity, as well as an incipient dialogue with other parts of the African continent. This article reads Imraan Coovadia’s 2012 novel, The Institute for Taxi Poetry, as part of a larger body of works that demonstrates a rethinking of the country’s “Africanity” (Smith 2012 Smith, Tymon. 2012. “The Fiction P…
Making and Unmaking 'African Foreignness: African Settings, African Migrants and the Migrant Detective in Contemporary South African Crime Fiction
This article aims to examine the portrayal of African migrants and South Africa’s relationship to the African continent in post-apartheid crime fiction. Exotic settings and the figure of the stranger have featured in the crime genre since its emergence in the 19th century. Reading Mike Nicol’s The Ibis Tapestry (1998), his trilogy Payback (2008), Killer Country (2010) and Black Heart (2011), and H.J. Golakai’s novel The Lazarus Effect (2011), thi…
(Post)Colonial We-Narratives and the "Writing Back" Paradigm: Joseph Conrad's The Nigger of the "Narcissus" and Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o's A Grain of Wheat
This article considers how postcolonial narratives written partly in the first-person plural collective voice reflect recent critical developments in postcolonial studies rather than echoing the outmoded "writing back" paradigm. Even colonial texts such as Joseph Conrad's The Nigger of the "Narcissus," according to narratologists the earliest example of extensive we-narration to which postcolonial authors respond, dramatize the inherent multiplic…
Democracy at home in South Africa: Family fictions and transitional culture, by Kerry Bystrom
Democracy at Home in South Africa is an invaluable inquiry into the complex figurations of South African transitional culture through the tropes of family and home in literary and artistic expressi
Versatile kinship: Trans-African family formations and postcolonial disillusionment in Niq Mhlongo'sAfter Tears
Much of the existing scholarship on Niq Mhlongo’s works has engaged with the author’s portrayal of township life and his use of humour and deceit to address pressing contemporary socio-economic issues. This article examines the constructions and contestations of belonging in his novel After Tears with particular focus on the trope of the family and its reconstruction through multiple engagements with migrants from other parts of Africa. Reading t…
Decolonizing the reading landscape: A conversation with Kgauhelo Dube
Reading and literacy projects in South Africa have a long and fascinating history. In this conversation, Kgauhelo Dube talks about a contemporary Pretoria-based initiative which seeks to promote reading and literacy through the showcasing of African authors and texts. The discussion explores some of the social and material dynamics which inform the post-apartheid reading project, including the lack of reading and library facilities in township se…
The short story in South Africa post-2000: Critical reflections on a genre in transition
This editorial offers critical reflections on short story writing in South Africa post-2000. Against the background of critical scholarship on the short story form and thematic trends of short story anthologies since the late 1980s, we argue that short story criticism on apartheid as well as contemporary South African short story writing has consistently emphasized the genre’s disposition to capture the fragmented realities of socio-political tra…
Crossing genre boundaries: H. J. Golakai's Afropolitan chick-lit mysteries
Crime fiction by women writers across the globe has in recent years begun to explore the position of women detectives within post-feminist cultural contexts, moving away from the explicit refusal of the heterosexual romance plot in earlier feminist ‘hard-boiled’ fiction. In this article, I analyse Hawa Jande Golakai's The Lazarus Effect (2011) and The Score (2015) as part of the tradition of crime fiction by women writers in South Africa. Joining…
Clandestine crossings: Narrating Zimbabwe's precarious diaspora in South Africa in Sue Nyathi'sThe Gold-Diggers(2018)
While there is a growing interest in Zimbabwean literature about diasporic experiences in the UK and the USA, scholarship on literary engagements with the Zimbabwean diaspora in South Africa remains sparse. This article analyses clandestine migration from Zimbabwe to South Africa and the formation of a precarious diaspora in the host country as represented in Sue Nyathi's 2018 novel The Gold-Diggers. In contrast to strategies seen in South-North …
Appeals to shared Africanness: Negotiating precarious childhoods and intra-African migration in two coming-of-age narratives in contemporary South Africa
Child and youth migration has not only been marginalized within scholarship on literary engagements with global migratory processes, but has also, for the most part, been studied in the narrow context of movements from the Global South to the Global North. This essay examines the complex dynamics of child and youth migration manifest in narratives of migration to South Africa from elsewhere on the African continent. Focusing on the coming-of-age …
African Literature in Transition: The Archive of African Literature, 1800–2000
This book offers a compelling new approach to African literatures as formed by and itself a form of collective memory. It explores the historical spaces and maps that African literature brings to the surface and re-imagines in novel ways. The stories that matter about what happened in the past together constitute a collective memory that African writers and readers draw upon to locate themselves within the world. The book examines the mental maps…
Migrant City: Mapping Literary Johannesburg across (Southern) Africa
This chapter offers a brief historical overview of selected works by A. S. Mopeli-Paulus, Legson Kayira, Charles Mungoshi, Aldino Muianga, Miriam Tlali, and Yvonne Vera to foreground the historical and material presence of migrants from other Southern African countries in Johannesburg’s literary archive. Tracing trajectories of change and continuity in the post-apartheid migrant city, the chapter shows how South African texts have shifted from em…
African urbanisms and their hinterlands: Contemporary Cultural Imaginaries of Spatial Connections
Sociology (12 works) · Gender Studies (11 works) · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies (11 works) · History (10 works) · South African History and Culture (10 works) · Art (9 works) · Political science (9 works) · Law (8 works) · Literature (8 works) · Politics (7 works)