Edgar Nabutanyi

I hold a PhD from the English Department, Stellenbosch University. I am currently an Associate Professor and Head of Department of Literature, Makerere University. I am also a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Literary Studies in English at Rhodes University, South Africa. While my teaching interests are in Children’s Literature, Critical Theory, Practical Criticism, Cultural Studies, Popular Literature and Media Studies, the central thesis of my research is that vulnerable minorities stealthy reconfigure the public sphere with such illocutionary force to make their issues matter and transform their lives from mere statistical footnotes to critical societal issues. I am also interested in how new media and non-orthodox publication outlets are disrupting literature by providing new avenues of consuming literature in ways that subvert the canon. My recent publications include “Dystopian Futures: Ugandan Science Fiction and Post-Apocalypse Contagions” in Journal of Literary Studies 38.1 (2022); “Surviving the Genocide: The Singularity of Suffering in Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor’s “Weight of Whispers” in Journal of East African Literary and Cultural Studies 8.1-2 (2021); “Language, Fiction and Heteropatriarchal Critique in Selected Recent Ugandan Short Fiction” in Sociolinguistic Studies 17.1-3; “Innovative Registers and Feminist Critique in Behr’s The Smell of Apples.” Tydskrif vir Letterkunde 61.1 (2024): 16-23; “Literary Activism, Fresh Registers, and Ecocritical Debates in Innocent Immaculate Acan’s Short Stories.” In (Eds) Ian P MacDonald and Katharine Polak (Eds). Days of Future Pasts: Memorialising the Future. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. (2024): 145-157; “The Trauma of War on Terror in Yvonne Owuor’s The Dragonfly Sea.” In (Eds). Norman Saadi Nikro, Denish Odanga, James Odhiambo Ogone, Oduor Obura and Obala Musumba. Insidious Trauma in Eastern African Literatures and Cultures. London: Routledge. (2024): 38-50