Evan Mwangi
Associate Professor in English
University Hall 326
Telephone: 847-491-3529
Fax: 847-467-1545
E-mail
Evan Maina Mwangi teaches 20th Century Anglophone African Literature. He studied at the University of Nairobi, from where where he graduated with a First Class Honours degree and a PhD in literature. He has taught courses in World Literature, Literary Theory, Postcolonial Discourse, Writing and Composition, Journalism and Mass Communication, and African Studies. He researches the intersection of nationalism, gender, and sexuality in canonical and popular artistic expressions, relating local texts to global theories.
Mwangi has published on Nazizi Hirji, Chinua Achebe, K. Sello Duiker, Amandina Lihamba, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, David Maillu, Henry ole Kulet, Margaret Ogola, and Francis Imbuga, among other postcolonial artists and intellectuals. His articles and poems have appeared in Mwangaza, TDR: The Drama Review, Research in African Literatures, ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature, English Studies in Africa, The Nairobi Journal of Literature, PMLA, and Africa Today.
The co-author of The Columbia Guide to East African Literature in English Since 1945 (Columbia University Press, 2007), Mwangi's latest book is Africa Writes Back to Self: Metafiction, Gender, Sexuality (State University of New York Press, 2009). Among other projects on African sports, murals, film, Sherlock Holmes, and hip hop, he is finishing work on a monograph investigating the place of gender and sexuality in the politics of language and translation in Africa. Using theories of translation proposed by Lawrence Venuti, Paul Ricoeur, Jacques Derrida, Domenico Jervolino, and Gayatri Spivak, the manuscript analyzes works by such writers as Gakaara wa Wanjau, Julius Nyerere, and Ken Walibora in the context of African and postcolonial literatures. His next book project is tentatively titled Blacks of the Ear: Celebrity Culture, Sound, and African Literature. It concerns the relationship between popular culture and literary imagination in Africa.
Publications by Evan Mwangi
-
The English Major in Writing Celebrates 30 Years on campus
-
Jo Ann Beard, Frank Bidart, and George Saunders were Writers in Residence for the English Major in Writing’s 3rd Annual Spring Writers’ Festival
-
Creative Writing students gather at the 3rd Annual Spring Writer’s Festival
-
English Department faculty attend one of the talks organized as part of the annual One Book, One Northwestern program
-
Writing students Cathy Gao (left) and Alleliah Nuguid (right) meet writer Elizabeth Benedict (center) at the Skidmore Summer Writers’ Institute.
Photo provided by Cathy Gao.
-
Northwestern writing students Matt Pacult, Cathy Gao, and Alleliah Nuguid meet poet Frank Bidart at the Skidmore Summer Writers’ Institute.
Photo provided by Cathy Gao.
-
Professors Mary Kinzie and John Keene celebrate 30 Years of creative writing at Northwestern
-
Professors Wendy Wall (Avalon Foundation Professor, left) and Reginald Gibbons (Frances Hooper Chair in the Arts and Humanities, right) at their inauguration, with Professor Christopher Herbert (Chester D. Tripp Professor of Humanities, center)
-
English Department faculty and students gathering before the Department's Fall Collation
-
Professor Rebecca Johnson speaks at the English Department's Fall Collation
Upcoming Event
IPR Colloquium: Frank Penedo | Psychosocial Interventions in Prostate Cancer Survivorship
May 20, 2013 • 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
