Emeritus Professor Ian Glenn

Professor of Media Studies

Professor Ian Glenn is Professor of Media Studies. He studied at the Universities of Natal (Durban) where he attained a BA in English and Politics and then an Honours in English, at the University of York in the UK where he read for a B.Phil and then at the University of Pennsylvania for an MA and PhD. His particular research interests are media in the new South Africa, political communication, audience studies, media technologies and the literature of exploration, and environmental media.

Recent publications

  • 2020: “The Paris Bloubok (Hippotragus leucophaeus (Pallas, 1766) [Bovidae]) and its provenance.” Zoosystema, 42:5, 77-84. https://doi.org/10.5252/zoosystema2020v42a5. http://zoosystema.com/42/5

  • 2019: “African Football: five notes for media students and cultural theorists.” Communitas, 24:12, pp.1-11. https://doi.org/10.18820/24150525/Comm.v24.12

  • 2019: Glenn, Ian; Sam Ferreira, Danie Pienaar: “Communication on rhino poaching: Precautionary lessons about backfires and boomerangs.” South African Journal of Science, 115:3/4, 1-4.

  • 2019: “J. M. Coetzee and the English Department at the University of Cape Town.” Safundi. 20:4, pp. 414-29. https://doi.org/10.1080/17533171.2019.1617456,

  • 2019: “Captivity novels as critique of South African colonialism.” English in Africa. 46:2.  August, pp. 67-83.

  • 2019: “Moving violation: The battle in Table Bay.” The Bulletin of the South African Library, 73: 2, pp. 153-66.

  • 2018: “‘Silent Hunter’ and its influence on wildlife documentary.” Communitas. 2018, 220-28.  DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/Comm.v23.15 ISSN 2415-0525

  • 2018: The First Safari: Searching for François Levaillant. Cape Town: Jacana.

  • 2018: “Shoot the Messager? How the Secretarybird Sagittarius serpentarius got its names (mostly wrong).” Ostrich. 89:3, 287-90. DOI: 10.2989/00306525.2018.1499561

  • 2017: “Robert Jacob Gordon’s Memoir on the Defence of the Cape of Good Hope.” Bulletin of the National Library of South Africa, vol. 71, no 1, June 2017, 21-30.

  • 2017: Robert Mattes and Ian Glenn: “Ch.31. The rise of Television Advertising in a Traditional Campaign Environment: The Case of South Africa.” In Holz Bacha and Just (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Political Advertising, Routledge, New York, pp. 389-401.

  • 2016: Kelly Phelps and Ian Glenn: “The trials of the century: Murder and the media in South Africa.” African Media Studies, 8:3, 361-78.

  • 2016: Lex Hes and Ian Glenn: “Listen up: Variation of African Scops Owl Call.” African Birdlife, 4:3 (March/April), 16-17.

  • 2016: “François Le Vaillant : Resistant botanist?” In Batsaki, Cahalan and Tchikine (eds.), The botany of empire in the long eighteenth century, Washington DC: Dumbarton Oaks, pp.143-64.

  • 2016: “Standing up for injustices: Nine Notes on #FeesMustFall.” Litnet University Seminar, 29 September. http://www.litnet.co.za/standing-injustices-nine-notes-feesmustfall/

  • 2016: “Rhodes Must Fall (#RMF) and Fees Must Fall (#FMF).” Bulletin of the National Library of South Africa, 70:1, 83-94.

  • 2015: “On your mark...: university grades, privacy, surveillance and control.” Cosmopolis, 2015;2, 85-91.

  • 2015: “Seventeenth and eighteenth century maps of Southern Africa in the Bibliothèque Nationale.” Bulletin of the National Library of South Africa, 69:2, 157-64.

  • 2014: “Double Nelson.” Bulletin of the National Library of South Africa, 68:2, 256-63.

  • 2014: “Sport and television in South Africa.” In Tager, M and Chasi, C (eds), Tuning In: Perspectives on Television in South Africa. Pearson, Johannesburg, pp. 69-80.

  • 2013: “Spotting the leopard: Fieldwork, science and leopard behaviour.” In Lesley Green (ed.) Contested Ecologies: Dialogues in the South on Nature and Knowledge. HSRC Press: Cape Town, pp. 227-42.

  • 2013: “Coovadia, Coetzee and the literary field of post-apartheid South Africa.” http://www.litnet.co.za/coovadia-coetzee-and-the-literary-field-of-post-apartheid-south-africa/