(Ebook) Reading from the South: African print cultures and oceanic turns in Isabel Hofmeyr’s work by CHARNE LAVERY, SARAH NUTTALL ISBN 9781776148387, 177614838X

(Ebook) Reading from the South: African print cultures and oceanic turns in Isabel Hofmeyr’s work by CHARNE LAVERY, SARAH NUTTALL ISBN 9781776148387, 177614838X

Isabel Hofmeyr is one of the world's leading scholars on African print cultures, postcolonial literary histories, Indian Ocean studies and the oceanic humanities. For four decades and counting, her work has produced profound conceptual innovations from the global South and for the world at large. The essays gathered in Reading from the South are written in a blend of intellectual and personal modes, and mostly by scholars of Indian and African descent. Via their engagement with Hofmeyr's path-breaking work, the essays in turn elaborate and contribute to studies of print culture as well as critical oceanic studies, consolidating their findings from the point of view of global South historical contexts and textual practices. The collection focuses on Hofmeyr's life and work, her education and early career, her deep rootedness in place, and her political, creative and institution-building activities. The book captures Hofmeyr's innovative and original scholarship through published works that address a range of topics: orality and literacy, feminist literary criticism, transnational histories of the book, South-South cultural connections, and the phenomenology of reading within the Indian Ocean world and, indeed, around the globe. After reading the collection as a whole, scholars in the field will have a much deeper appreciation of Hofmeyr's work and the formidable contribution she has made to the study of African print cultures and oceanic humanities at large.This book draws together reflective and analytical essays by renowned intellectuals from around the world who critically engage with the work of one of the global South's leading scholars of African print cultures and the oceanic humanities. Isabel Hofmeyr's scholarship spans more than four decades, and its sustained and long-term influence on her discipline and beyond is formidable. While much of the history of print cultures has been written primarily from the North, Isabel Hofmeyr is one of the leading thinkers producing new knowledge in this area from Africa, the Indian Ocean world and the global South. Her major contribution encompasses the history of the book as well as shorter textual forms and abridged iterations of canonical works such as John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress. She has done pioneering research on the ways in which such printed matter moves across the globe, focusing on intra-African trajectories and circulations as well as movements across land and sea, port and shore. The essays gathered here are written in a blend of intellectual and personal modes, and mostly by scholars of Indian and African descent. Via their engagement with Hofmeyr's path-breaking work, the essays in turn elaborate and contribute to studies of print culture as well as critical oceanic studies, consolidating their findings from the point of view of global South historical contexts and textual practices.