Dr. Alexander Fyfe received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and African Studies from the Pennsylvania State University in 2019. Prior to joining UGA, he taught at the American University of Beirut and the University of Edinburgh. While his primary focus is modern African literatures, he also teaches in the areas of postcolonial literatures, world literature, and critical theory.
Dr. Fyfe's research is concerned with the relations between politics and literary form in modern African literatures. His current book project argues that African writers have consistently used literature as a kind of decolonial practice. Writers such as diverse as Gabriel Okara, Bessie Head, Susan Kiguli, and Chwayita Ngamlana use a wide variety of literary forms to articulate new and politically expedient modes of existence, beyond the constraints of coloniality. In addition to his published articles, he has edited special issues of African identities and, with Rosemary Jolly, The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry. An essay volume entitled African Literatures as World Literatures, co-edited with Madhu Krishnan, will appear in October 2022 with Bloomsbury Academic Publishing.
Selected Publications
African Literatures as World Literature, co-edited with Madhu Krishnan. Bloomsbury Academic Publishing. Under contract, forthcoming October 2022.
"Infrastructure and the Valences of the Literary in Fiston Mwanza Mujila's Tram 83." Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction. Pre-published online, print forthcoming 2022.
“‘Reading and Writing... Loudly’: Ikhide R. Ikheloa, Online Criticism, and African Literary Studies.” Social Dynamics. 47.1, 2021, 154-171.
“Marxism and African Literary Studies Today.” African Identities 18.1-2, 2020, 1-17.
“The Archival Politics of the Postcolonial Special Collection: A Case Study in Literary Value and Amos Tutuola.” ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature 50.2-3, 2019, 137-161.
“Wealth in Fiction: Animism, Capitalism, and Ben Okri’s The Famished Road Trilogy.” The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry 5.3, 2018, 318-337.
“The Textual Politics of the Land in the Writings of Ken Saro-Wiwa.” Research in African Literatures 48.4, 2017, 78-93.
“Universalism and the Specificity of the Literary in Frantz Fanon’s ‘On National Culture’”. Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 19.6, 2017, 764-780