Banner Literature HomeUCSD

Robert CANCEL - Ph.D. (Wisconsin-Madison)

Primary Office: SEQ 134
Primary Phone: (858) 534-2742
(ANS MACHINE)
Secondary Office: LIT 428
Secondary Phone: (858) 534-3986
(ANS MACHINE)
Winter 2010 Office Hours : M 10-11 , TTh 10-12
Winter 2010 Teaching Schedule:
Course: LTCO 274 Time: Tu 1300-1550 Location: LIT 437
Course: LTEN 159 Time: TuTh 800-920 Location: CENTR 222
Email: rcancel@ucsd.edu

Associate Professor - African and Comparative Literature

Affiliated Faculty for Department of Ethnic Studies
Director: Third Word Studies Program

Oral Literature; Modern African Literature and Film; Caribbean Literature

Selected Publications:

"Literary Criticism as Social Philippic and Personal Exorcism: Ngg wa Thiong'o's Critical Writings," World Literature Today, 59.1 (1985).

"Broadcasting Oral Traditions: The 'Logic' of Narrative Variants--The Problem of 'Message,'" African Studies Review (Special Humanities Issue), 29.1 (1986): 60-70, co-edited with Bennetta Jules-Rosette.

"Elements of Oral Epic in Ousmane Sembene's Ceddo," A Current Bibliography of African Affairs, 18.1 (1986): 3-19.

"Three African (Oral) Narrative Versions: Text, Tradition and Performance," The American Journal of Semiotics, 6.1 (1988-89): 85-109.

Allegorical Speculation in an Oral Society: The Tabwa Narrative Tradition, Series in Modern Philology, 122. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.

"Literature in African Languages: Perspectives on Culture and Identity," A History of Twentieth-Century African Literature, ed. Oyekan Owomoyela. London and Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993: 285-310.

"Nadine Gordimer Meets Ngg wa Thiong'o: Text into Film in 'Oral History,'" Research in African Literature, 26.3 (1995): 38-48.

"Bemba History, Religious Systems and Rituals," "Oral Performance and Literature," "Oral Narrative," "Oral Traditions," and "Dynamics of Oral Performance," Encyclopedia of African Religions and Philosophy, ed. V.Y. Mudimbe. Forthcoming, New York: Garland Publishing.

"Ngg wa Thiong'o," Modern African Writers, ed. Brian Cox. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1997: 537-556.

"'Whose Africa is it, Anyway?' Or, What Exactly is Skip Gates Signifyin'?" "First Word" Review Essay, African Arts, 33.2: 1, 3, 6, 8, 10, 86-88, 2000.

Review of South African Fiction After Apartheid, a special issue of Modern Fiction Studies 46.1 (2000), in Research in African Literatures 33.1 (2002): 182-83.

"Gestures of Belonging and Claiming Birth Rights: Short Stories by Bessie Head and Ama Ata Aidoo." Critical Perspectives on Bessie Head, Huma Ibrahim, ed. Africa World Press, 2002.

"'Come Back South Africa': Cinematic Representations of Apartheid over Three Eras of Resistance." A chapter in Focus on African Film, edited by Francoise Pfaff, forthcoming from Indiana University Press.