Current PhD Student

Kim Daniells

Thesis Title:

Heterotopia and Contemporary South African Literature by Women in English

Supervisor:

Professor David Atwell & Professor Emilie Morin

Description:

My thesis examines a selection of contemporary South African novels written in English by women, and argues that these texts demonstrate how the deployment of heterotopic spaces is central to the representation of female characters. Each of the four chapters – ‘Islands’, ‘Zoos’, ‘Gardens’, and ‘Suburbs’ – considers a primary text by one South African woman writer, focusing on a space that is central to the narrative and to the experiences of the female characters. A postscript to the fourth chapter addresses one further contemporary primary text.

The thesis adopts an interdisciplinary and intertextual approach to five primary texts – Marguerite Poland’s The Keeper, Henrietta Rose-Innes’ Green Lion, Claire Robertson’s Under Glass, Zoë Wicomb’s Playing in the Light, and Yewande Omotoso’s The Woman Next Door – and examines the extent to which heterotopia function as zones of transformation for the women portrayed.

From a broader perspective the thesis explores the significance of the spatial and temporal in analysis of contemporary South African fiction by women.