Professor Jane Poyner

I began my research career as a JM Coetzee scholar, and have published 3 books on his writing, as well as many articles and book chapters. My first book, J. M. Coetzee and the Idea of the Public Intellectual (Ohio UP, 2006), is an edited volume of essays by world-leading Coetzee scholars. This book won the prestigious 2007 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award of the American Library Association. The Swedish Academy lists this book on the Nobel Prize web pages for Coetzee, who won the Novel Prize in Literature in 2003. J. M. Coetzee and the Paradox of Postcolonial Authorship is my monograph on Coetzee (Ashgate, 2009). I have also co-edited Approaches to Teaching J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace and Other Works, with Laura Wright and Elleke Boehmer, in the prestigious MLA Approaches to Teaching World Literature Series (MLA, 2014). This book was nominated by the MLA, the most important Modern and contemporary literature association, for the 2015 biennial Teaching Literature Book Award (Idaho State University).

Broadening the scope of my research, my most recent book, The Worlding of the South African Novel: Spaces of Transition, was published in 2020 by Palgrave as part of its New Comparisons in World Literature series. This book includes analyses of work by South African writers like Zoe Wicomb, Zakes Mda, Niq Mhlongo and Ivan Vladislavic. The book shows how, despite momentous political transition from apartheid to democracy, little in South Africa’s socio-economic reality has actually changed. It discusses how the contemporary South African novel engages with this reality. In forms of literary experiment, the novels open up intellectual spaces shaping or contesting the idea of the “new South Africa”.

I have been developing my interest in Ivan Vladislavic's work, and have published several book chapters and articles on his work. I recently interviewed Vladislavic for our student and research communities with one of our PhD students, Josh Hambleton-Jewell.

I also work on the cross-over between art and visual culture and postcolonial studies. My current research is deepening my interests in environmental justice in literatures of the Global South.

My teaching reflects all these interests, as well as World and postcolonial literatures, the environmental humanties, and urban studies . I welcome PhD applications in all the areas detailed here.

To book an office hour slot, please click here.

Research supervision:

I welcome applications from prospective PhD students in the following areas:

• South African literature and cultural history
• Environmental justice in the Global South, literary representations of
• World and postcolonial literatures and cultures
• The "postcolonial" city, literary representations of
• Art and visual culture, literary represenations of
• South African writers, including: J.M. Coetzee, Ivan Vladislavic, Zoe Wicomb, Zakes Mda, Phaswane Mpe

Please get in touch by email if you would like to discuss applying.