Evan Mwangi
Biographic Data
| ID | 94928 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Evan Mwangi |
| GIVEN NAMES | Evan |
| FAMILY NAME | Mwangi |
| SIGNATURE | MWANGI E |
| AFFILIATIONS | Ohio University |
| ORCID | 0009-0008-2388-7034 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 39 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Introduction
Masculinity and nationalism in East African hip-hop music
East African music aligns itself with nationalistic desires while attempting to create a transnational and regional agenda that goes beyond individual nation-states. Hip-hop music appears at pains to define itself as different from the western art-forms with which it is hastily associated by instantiating localized forms and creating a different locution. This paper surveys East African hip-hop to demonstrate that the music is a productive site u…
Translation in African Contexts
Queer Agency in Kenya's Digital Media
Although scholars have noted the rising potentials for democracy in Africa as a result of increased use of digital media and mobile technologies, there seems to be a disregard or disavowal of queerness as part of that growing democratic space, as well as a related tendency to regard African culture solely in terms of mainstream writing and journalism. This article seeks to bridge this gap in the scholarship by means of a discourse analysis of com…
Participatory Deep Learning in a Diverse Class on Minority Literatures
This paper is a reflexive exploration of my teaching and evaluation techniques in a diverse class on minority literature. I explain my classroom evaluation and teaching techniques in offering an African literature course as a junior African professor trained outside the United States and teaching in a predominantly white institution. Using Paulo Freire, bell hooks, and Greg Light, Roy Cox, and Susanna Calkins, I assess my effectiveness as a stude…
The Incomplete Rebellion
This paper concerns the simultaneous and contradictory conceptions of Kenyan history by rereading popular representations of the Mau Mau war of Kenyan independence and its postindependence consequences. It examines twenty-first-century evocations and appropriations of Mau Mau in relation to earlier discourses in literature and politics. It discovers that contemporary artists and citizens deploy references to Mau Mau outside of its historical cont…
Between imagination and delusion
This paper reads Ken Walibora’s Kiswahili children’s book Ndoto ya Amerika [The American Dream] as a critical intervention in the politics of the imagination in Kenya. I argue that although the story is radical in its subtle criticism of the West, its main focus is the disillusionment with the post‐independence dispensation in Africa. By tracking the story’s imaginative engagements with the Kiswahili language, the African American diaspora, and t…
Gender and the Erotics of Nationalism in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's Drama
At the intersection of symbolic language, gender, and national politics, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o uses sexual puns as a metaphor for land and political independence. Performance is central to all of Ngũgĩ's writing, and his oral performances in praise of his wife, Njeeri, mark the acme of his gendered use of language for political ends. Ngũgĩ's practice raises the question of whether the use of indigenous languages in African drama is liberating in and …
Amandina Lihamba's Gendered Adaptation of Sembene Ousmane's The Money-Order
This essay examines the adaptation and translation of Sembene Ousmane's novella The Money-Order (originally published in French in 1966 as Le mandat) into Hawala ya Fedha (1980), a Kiswahili play by the Tanzanian woman dramatist Amandina Lihamba. Drawing on the contemporary theories of translation and adaptation that demote fidelity to the original as the cornerstone of translation, I demonstrate that the changes that Lihamba introduces in her te…
Gender, Unreliable Oral Narration, and the Untranslated Preface in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's Devil on the Cross
In this paper, I consider the narrative in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's Devil on the Cross against a largely ignored preface in the Gĩkũyũ edition of the novel Caitaani Mũtharaba-inĩ, and against the conventions of the gĩcaandĩ art that the novel invokes. Focusing on the interimplication of gender and orality in the story, I employ cultural narratology as my framework to examine the dialogic relationship between the novel's formal features and their cultu…
Hybridity in Emergent East African Poetry
This article draws out the uses of hybridity in East African poetry published in the 1990s, with a focus on the writing of Ugandan poet Susan N. Kiguli and her relation to other emergent writers in the region. I argue that hybridity has become more accentuated in contemporary poetry, whereby poets self-reflexively discuss in their poems the writing and interpretation of poetry in a process that makes the poetic experience a liminal space between …
The Gendered Politics of Untranslated Language and Aporia in Ngugi wa Thiong'o's Petals of Blood
Petals of Blood, the fourth and the last novel that Ngugi wa Thiong'o wrote in English and published in 1977, contains numerous moments of untranslated African expressions that presage his 1986 abandonment of English as a literary medium. The untranslated expressions are intensely gendered and argue for scrutiny because of their prominence and obtrusiveness in an Anglophone text. In figuring the untranslated desire from colonialism to independenc…
Queer Agency in Kenya's Digital Media
Although scholars have noted the rising potentials for democracy in Africa as a result of increased use of digital media and mobile technologies, there seems to be a disregard or disavowal of queerness as part of that growing democratic space, as well as a related tendency to regard African culture solely in terms of mainstream writing and journalism. This article seeks to bridge this gap in the scholarship by means of a discourse analysis of com…
Masculinity and nationalism in East African hip-hop music
East African music aligns itself with nationalistic desires while attempting to create a transnational and regional agenda that goes beyond individual nation-states. Hip-hop music appears at pains to define itself as different from the western art-forms with which it is hastily associated by instantiating localized forms and creating a different locution. This paper surveys East African hip-hop to demonstrate that the music is a productive site u…
The Incomplete Rebellion
This paper concerns the simultaneous and contradictory conceptions of Kenyan history by rereading popular representations of the Mau Mau war of Kenyan independence and its postindependence consequences. It examines twenty-first-century evocations and appropriations of Mau Mau in relation to earlier discourses in literature and politics. It discovers that contemporary artists and citizens deploy references to Mau Mau outside of its historical cont…
Hybridity in Emergent East African Poetry
This article draws out the uses of hybridity in East African poetry published in the 1990s, with a focus on the writing of Ugandan poet Susan N. Kiguli and her relation to other emergent writers in the region. I argue that hybridity has become more accentuated in contemporary poetry, whereby poets self-reflexively discuss in their poems the writing and interpretation of poetry in a process that makes the poetic experience a liminal space between …
Introduction
Between imagination and delusion
This paper reads Ken Walibora’s Kiswahili children’s book Ndoto ya Amerika [The American Dream] as a critical intervention in the politics of the imagination in Kenya. I argue that although the story is radical in its subtle criticism of the West, its main focus is the disillusionment with the post‐independence dispensation in Africa. By tracking the story’s imaginative engagements with the Kiswahili language, the African American diaspora, and t…
Amandina Lihamba's Gendered Adaptation of Sembene Ousmane's The Money-Order
This essay examines the adaptation and translation of Sembene Ousmane's novella The Money-Order (originally published in French in 1966 as Le mandat) into Hawala ya Fedha (1980), a Kiswahili play by the Tanzanian woman dramatist Amandina Lihamba. Drawing on the contemporary theories of translation and adaptation that demote fidelity to the original as the cornerstone of translation, I demonstrate that the changes that Lihamba introduces in her te…
The Gendered Politics of Untranslated Language and Aporia in Ngugi wa Thiong'o's Petals of Blood
Petals of Blood, the fourth and the last novel that Ngugi wa Thiong'o wrote in English and published in 1977, contains numerous moments of untranslated African expressions that presage his 1986 abandonment of English as a literary medium. The untranslated expressions are intensely gendered and argue for scrutiny because of their prominence and obtrusiveness in an Anglophone text. In figuring the untranslated desire from colonialism to independenc…
The Gendered Politics of Untranslated Language and Aporia in Ngugi wa Thiong'o's Petals of Blood
Petals of Blood, the fourth and the last novel that Ngugi wa Thiong'o wrote in English and published in 1977, contains numerous moments of untranslated African expressions that presage his 1986 abandonment of English as a literary medium. The untranslated expressions are intensely gendered and argue for scrutiny because of their prominence and obtrusiveness in an Anglophone text. In figuring the untranslated desire from colonialism to independenc…
Gender, Unreliable Oral Narration, and the Untranslated Preface in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's Devil on the Cross
In this paper, I consider the narrative in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's Devil on the Cross against a largely ignored preface in the Gĩkũyũ edition of the novel Caitaani Mũtharaba-inĩ, and against the conventions of the gĩcaandĩ art that the novel invokes. Focusing on the interimplication of gender and orality in the story, I employ cultural narratology as my framework to examine the dialogic relationship between the novel's formal features and their cultu…
Hybridity in Emergent East African Poetry
This article draws out the uses of hybridity in East African poetry published in the 1990s, with a focus on the writing of Ugandan poet Susan N. Kiguli and her relation to other emergent writers in the region. I argue that hybridity has become more accentuated in contemporary poetry, whereby poets self-reflexively discuss in their poems the writing and interpretation of poetry in a process that makes the poetic experience a liminal space between …
Gender and the Erotics of Nationalism in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's Drama
At the intersection of symbolic language, gender, and national politics, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o uses sexual puns as a metaphor for land and political independence. Performance is central to all of Ngũgĩ's writing, and his oral performances in praise of his wife, Njeeri, mark the acme of his gendered use of language for political ends. Ngũgĩ's practice raises the question of whether the use of indigenous languages in African drama is liberating in and …
Amandina Lihamba's Gendered Adaptation of Sembene Ousmane's The Money-Order
This essay examines the adaptation and translation of Sembene Ousmane's novella The Money-Order (originally published in French in 1966 as Le mandat) into Hawala ya Fedha (1980), a Kiswahili play by the Tanzanian woman dramatist Amandina Lihamba. Drawing on the contemporary theories of translation and adaptation that demote fidelity to the original as the cornerstone of translation, I demonstrate that the changes that Lihamba introduces in her te…
Participatory Deep Learning in a Diverse Class on Minority Literatures
This paper is a reflexive exploration of my teaching and evaluation techniques in a diverse class on minority literature. I explain my classroom evaluation and teaching techniques in offering an African literature course as a junior African professor trained outside the United States and teaching in a predominantly white institution. Using Paulo Freire, bell hooks, and Greg Light, Roy Cox, and Susanna Calkins, I assess my effectiveness as a stude…
The Incomplete Rebellion
This paper concerns the simultaneous and contradictory conceptions of Kenyan history by rereading popular representations of the Mau Mau war of Kenyan independence and its postindependence consequences. It examines twenty-first-century evocations and appropriations of Mau Mau in relation to earlier discourses in literature and politics. It discovers that contemporary artists and citizens deploy references to Mau Mau outside of its historical cont…
Between imagination and delusion
This paper reads Ken Walibora’s Kiswahili children’s book Ndoto ya Amerika [The American Dream] as a critical intervention in the politics of the imagination in Kenya. I argue that although the story is radical in its subtle criticism of the West, its main focus is the disillusionment with the post‐independence dispensation in Africa. By tracking the story’s imaginative engagements with the Kiswahili language, the African American diaspora, and t…
Queer Agency in Kenya's Digital Media
Although scholars have noted the rising potentials for democracy in Africa as a result of increased use of digital media and mobile technologies, there seems to be a disregard or disavowal of queerness as part of that growing democratic space, as well as a related tendency to regard African culture solely in terms of mainstream writing and journalism. This article seeks to bridge this gap in the scholarship by means of a discourse analysis of com…
Translation in African Contexts
Introduction
Masculinity and nationalism in East African hip-hop music
East African music aligns itself with nationalistic desires while attempting to create a transnational and regional agenda that goes beyond individual nation-states. Hip-hop music appears at pains to define itself as different from the western art-forms with which it is hastily associated by instantiating localized forms and creating a different locution. This paper surveys East African hip-hop to demonstrate that the music is a productive site u…
Political science (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Art (7 works) · Gender Studies (6 works) · Literature (6 works) · Politics (6 works) · African history and culture studies (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies (5 works)