Robert Cancel
 Ph.D. (Wisconsin-Madison)Professor of African and Comparative Literature Primary Office: Contact Department Primary Phone: Contact Department Quarterly Office Hours Email: rcancel@ucsd.edu |
Affiliated Faculty for Department of Ethnic Studies
Oral Literature; Modern African Literature and Film; Caribbean Literature
Selected Publication:
’Heads ‘a go roll down Sandy Gully’: Political Jamaican Reggae of the early 1970s. Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies. Vol. 1, no. 2, Fall 2013.
Storytelling in Northern Zambia: Theory, Method, Practice and Other Necessary Fictions Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, July 2013. (Book)
African Diasporas: Ancestors, Migrations and Boundaries, co-edited with Winifred Woodhull, Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2008. (Co-Edited Book)
Asserting/Inventing Traditions on the Luapula: The Lunda Mutomboko Festival. African Arts, 34.3: 12-25, 2006.
3000 word entry on Lunda folklore, Encyclopedia of World Folklore [Six Volumes]. Greenwood Publishing Co., William M. Clements, ed., 2005.
"Festivals: Mutomboko Festival of the Lunda" in African Folklore: An Encyclopedia, Philip M. Peek and Kwesi Yankah, eds. New York and London: Routledge, 2004, pp. 123-25. [Plus four more shorter entries on oral literature]
"’Come Back South Africa’: Cinematic Representations of Apartheid over Three Eras of Resistance." Focus on African Film, Francoise Pfaff, ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004. (Book Chapter)
"Gestures of Belonging and Claiming Birth Rights: Short Stories by Bessie Head and Ama Ata Aidoo." Critical Perspectives on Bessie Head, Huma Ibrahim, ed. Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press, 2003. (Book Chapter)
’Whose Africa is it, Anyway?’ Or, What Exactly is Skip Gates Signifyin’?" "First Word," African Arts, 33.2: 1, 3, 6, 8, 10, 86-88, 2000. (Solicited Review Essay)
"Ngugi wa Thiong’o." In African Writers, C. Brian Cox, ed. Charles Scribner’s Sons; London: Simon and Schuster Prentice Hall International, 1997, pp. 537-55.
"Nadine Gordimer Meets Ngugi wa Thiong’o: Text into Film in ‘Oral History’." Research in African Literatures, 26.3: 38-48, 1995.
Literature in African Languages: Perspectives on Culture and Identity.” In A History of Twentieth-Century African Literature, Oyekan Owomoyela, ed. London and Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993, pp. 285-310. (Book Chapter)
"Three African (Oral) Narrative Versions: Text, Tradition and Performance." The American Journal of Semiotics, VI, 1, 1988-89, pp. 85-109.
Allegorical Speculation in an Oral Society: The Tabwa Narrative Tradition. Series in Modern Philology, no. 122. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. (Book)