Dr Athambile Masola received her PhD from Rhodes University. Her dissertation was an exploration of black women’s life writing with a particular focus on Noni Jabavu and Sisonke Msimang’s memoirs. Her primary research focuses on black women’s life writing and historiography. Her research is also informed by the early 20th century newspaper archive in South Africa (particularly written in isiXhosa). She is primarily concerned with the nature of erasure and the ways in which multiple forms of reading a variety of texts can inform archival research.
Research Interests and Areas of Supervision:
- Black women’s historiography
- Early 20th century Literary and Intellectual Histories
- African language newspaper archive and public sphere
Select Publications:
- Creative output: Ilifa, Uhlanga Press, 2021 (poetry collection)
- “African Women’s Letters as Intellectual History and Decolonial Knowledge Production”. In: Yacob-Haliso O., Falola T. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of African Women's Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77030-7_163-1
- https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-319-77030-7_163-1
- “Transformation in the trade publishing sector in South Africa” in Arts, Development and Democracy Project. Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection, edited by I.J. Mhlambi and S. Ngidi (Febuary 2021)
- The Politics of the 1920s Black Press: Charlotte Maxeke and Nontsizi Mgqwetho’s Critique of Congress, International Journal of African Renaissance Studies - Multi-, Inter- and Transdisciplinarity (Issue 2), Volume 13, 2018 (Online January 2019).
- “Bantu women on the move”: Black women and the politics of mobility in The Bantu World, Historia, May 2018.
- “What Is a Place?”: Exploring Place and Displacement in Lauretta Ngcobo’s Novel Cross of Gold, co-authored with Makhosazana Xaba, Scrutiny2: Issues in English Studies in Southern Africa, Volume 22, September 2017.