Ruth S Wenske
Biographic Data
| ID | 384142 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ruth S Wenske |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ruth S |
| FAMILY NAME | Wenske |
| SIGNATURE | WENSKE R S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Hebrew University of Jerusalem |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2246-6867 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 11 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 11 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Bodies of Water and Women
This article focuses on the metaphorical significance of rainfall in Ugandan women’s literature, arguing that stories about rain reflect the gendered aspects of colonial and state violence. Building on Sarah Nuttall’s recent call to “read for rain” (2022), the article focuses on how rain registers East African water-related ontologies, but also hydrocolonial violence, in two Ugandan realist novels, Goretti Kyomuhendo’s Waiting and Jennifer Nansub…
African SF
Between Cosmology and Technology
This article develops the term nonhuman near-omniscience to examine the narrative dynamics behind narrators who know almost everything and whose super-human knowledge draws on African cosmologies. Noting the prevalence of such narration in African sf, the article takes Nnedi Okorafor's novel Lagoon (2014) as an example of nonhuman near-omniscience, focusing on the role of the storytelling spider Udide Okwanka as the novel's metanarrator. It trace…
Shades of Black
Language ideologies in the promotion of English in Uganda’s educational system
This article is a historical investigation of language-in-education policy in Uganda. It compares educational reports from the 1890s to the 2000s with research from cultural history to trace how language ideologies shaped the use of English and African languages in Ugandan schools. The historical perspective seeks to complement current research on mother tongue education in Uganda by interrogating the nexus of economic, religious, political and i…
"I Am a Creole and Have Good Scotch Blood"
Mary Seacole's memoir Wonderful Adventures is recognized for its negotiation of various genres of Victorian writing, including autobiography, travel writing, the slave narrative, and a burgeoning Caribbean tradition of letters. It is a text which is usually interpreted through conventions of Empire, or through the lens of Postcolonial studies. Attempting to bridge this either/or approach, this article focuses on Seacole's construction of narrativ…
Either/or literacies
This article seeks to understand the challenges of literacy acquisition under the Thematic Curriculum reform in Uganda, which introduced Mother Tongue instruction in lower primary. We compare teachers’ perspectives from two a central district using Luganda and two peripheral districts using Ateso, drawing on a multi-layered approach to understand the interplay between policy, pedagogical, and conceptual-level factors that shape the way Mother Ton…
Teacherly aesthetics
In this paper I use the concept of teacherliness to explore the connections between literature and education in Binyavanga Wainaina’s memoir One Day I Will Write About This Place and his opinion pieces on education. I read Wainaina’s texts against the way the literature/literacy duality has been envisioned in historical discourses, arguing that deeper pedagogical questions were largely overlooked in the intersections between the two theoretical f…
Home is a place in time
This article engages with the works of Sudanese American poet Safia Elhillo, a rising star in Arab, African, and diasporic literary circles. It explores the chronotopic use of metre, repetition, keywords, and mise-en-abyme in Elhillo’s works to think through the ontological stakes of postcolonial verse. It consequently proposes fractals as a non-binary way of conceptualizing hybridity, linking these to a polychronic logic, where the poems’ form a…
I think it was a trick to fail Eastern”
Adichie in Dialogue with Achebe
This article examines the continuity between Chinua Achebe’s rural novels and Chimamanda Adichie’s 2007 novel Half of a Yellow Sun. Based on the concept of complementary dualism, the article explores the affinity between the two authors and their works through several sets of dualities: individualism and collectivism, natural and supernatural, and tradition and change, which gradually becomes the duality of African and Western. Suggesting that th…
Adichie in Dialogue with Achebe
This article examines the continuity between Chinua Achebe’s rural novels and Chimamanda Adichie’s 2007 novel Half of a Yellow Sun. Based on the concept of complementary dualism, the article explores the affinity between the two authors and their works through several sets of dualities: individualism and collectivism, natural and supernatural, and tradition and change, which gradually becomes the duality of African and Western. Suggesting that th…
Either/or literacies
This article seeks to understand the challenges of literacy acquisition under the Thematic Curriculum reform in Uganda, which introduced Mother Tongue instruction in lower primary. We compare teachers’ perspectives from two a central district using Luganda and two peripheral districts using Ateso, drawing on a multi-layered approach to understand the interplay between policy, pedagogical, and conceptual-level factors that shape the way Mother Ton…
Teacherly aesthetics
In this paper I use the concept of teacherliness to explore the connections between literature and education in Binyavanga Wainaina’s memoir One Day I Will Write About This Place and his opinion pieces on education. I read Wainaina’s texts against the way the literature/literacy duality has been envisioned in historical discourses, arguing that deeper pedagogical questions were largely overlooked in the intersections between the two theoretical f…
I think it was a trick to fail Eastern”
Between Cosmology and Technology
This article develops the term nonhuman near-omniscience to examine the narrative dynamics behind narrators who know almost everything and whose super-human knowledge draws on African cosmologies. Noting the prevalence of such narration in African sf, the article takes Nnedi Okorafor's novel Lagoon (2014) as an example of nonhuman near-omniscience, focusing on the role of the storytelling spider Udide Okwanka as the novel's metanarrator. It trace…
Home is a place in time
This article engages with the works of Sudanese American poet Safia Elhillo, a rising star in Arab, African, and diasporic literary circles. It explores the chronotopic use of metre, repetition, keywords, and mise-en-abyme in Elhillo’s works to think through the ontological stakes of postcolonial verse. It consequently proposes fractals as a non-binary way of conceptualizing hybridity, linking these to a polychronic logic, where the poems’ form a…
Adichie in Dialogue with Achebe
This article examines the continuity between Chinua Achebe’s rural novels and Chimamanda Adichie’s 2007 novel Half of a Yellow Sun. Based on the concept of complementary dualism, the article explores the affinity between the two authors and their works through several sets of dualities: individualism and collectivism, natural and supernatural, and tradition and change, which gradually becomes the duality of African and Western. Suggesting that th…
I think it was a trick to fail Eastern”
"I Am a Creole and Have Good Scotch Blood"
Mary Seacole's memoir Wonderful Adventures is recognized for its negotiation of various genres of Victorian writing, including autobiography, travel writing, the slave narrative, and a burgeoning Caribbean tradition of letters. It is a text which is usually interpreted through conventions of Empire, or through the lens of Postcolonial studies. Attempting to bridge this either/or approach, this article focuses on Seacole's construction of narrativ…
Either/or literacies
This article seeks to understand the challenges of literacy acquisition under the Thematic Curriculum reform in Uganda, which introduced Mother Tongue instruction in lower primary. We compare teachers’ perspectives from two a central district using Luganda and two peripheral districts using Ateso, drawing on a multi-layered approach to understand the interplay between policy, pedagogical, and conceptual-level factors that shape the way Mother Ton…
Teacherly aesthetics
In this paper I use the concept of teacherliness to explore the connections between literature and education in Binyavanga Wainaina’s memoir One Day I Will Write About This Place and his opinion pieces on education. I read Wainaina’s texts against the way the literature/literacy duality has been envisioned in historical discourses, arguing that deeper pedagogical questions were largely overlooked in the intersections between the two theoretical f…
Home is a place in time
This article engages with the works of Sudanese American poet Safia Elhillo, a rising star in Arab, African, and diasporic literary circles. It explores the chronotopic use of metre, repetition, keywords, and mise-en-abyme in Elhillo’s works to think through the ontological stakes of postcolonial verse. It consequently proposes fractals as a non-binary way of conceptualizing hybridity, linking these to a polychronic logic, where the poems’ form a…
Shades of Black
Language ideologies in the promotion of English in Uganda’s educational system
This article is a historical investigation of language-in-education policy in Uganda. It compares educational reports from the 1890s to the 2000s with research from cultural history to trace how language ideologies shaped the use of English and African languages in Ugandan schools. The historical perspective seeks to complement current research on mother tongue education in Uganda by interrogating the nexus of economic, religious, political and i…
African SF
Between Cosmology and Technology
This article develops the term nonhuman near-omniscience to examine the narrative dynamics behind narrators who know almost everything and whose super-human knowledge draws on African cosmologies. Noting the prevalence of such narration in African sf, the article takes Nnedi Okorafor's novel Lagoon (2014) as an example of nonhuman near-omniscience, focusing on the role of the storytelling spider Udide Okwanka as the novel's metanarrator. It trace…
Bodies of Water and Women
This article focuses on the metaphorical significance of rainfall in Ugandan women’s literature, arguing that stories about rain reflect the gendered aspects of colonial and state violence. Building on Sarah Nuttall’s recent call to “read for rain” (2022), the article focuses on how rain registers East African water-related ontologies, but also hydrocolonial violence, in two Ugandan realist novels, Goretti Kyomuhendo’s Waiting and Jennifer Nansub…
Art (6 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Epistemology (4 works) · Linguistics (4 works) · Literature (4 works) · Pedagogy (4 works) · Political science (4 works) · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies (4 works) · Aesthetics (3 works)