About

Dr Fiona Farnsworth is a Sessional Tutor in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies, and an Associate Fellow in the IAS. In 2021/22 she is convening EN2H3/EN3H3 Race, Ethnicity, and Migration in the AmericasLink opens in a new window, and co-leading on both EN126 History and Textuality and EN2J9 Writing History.

Research Interests

My doctoral research - entitled "Contemporary Literary Foodways Between Sub-Saharan Africa and the USA" - examined contemporary literary representations and registrations of foodways between sub-Saharan Africa and the United States. In it, I read food as a site which shapes – and is shaped by – sociopolitical struggles surrounding identity and power; and I contend that this discussion is one which is both explicitly and implicitly ‘worlded’. This work sits at a critical intersection between my central areas of expertise: world literatures; Anglophone literatures of Africa and the African diaspora; and environmental humanities, particularly food studies.

In my current work, I am looking at issues of food justice in contemporary African literatures across genres (including speculative fiction, graphic novels and comic books, and cookbooks), and the critical intersections this poses between environmental humanities, world-ecology, and world(-) literature as the literature of the world-system.

Key research interests: Anglophone African literatures; world literature; environmental humanities (particularly food studies); women's writing.

I seek opportunities for research, review, and collaboration in any of my areas of interest - please feel free to contact me via fiona dot farnsworth at warwick dot ac dot uk.

Selected Publications

Articles

• "Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing and the Global Resonances of Foodways Between Ghana and the USA"
  Under review
• "What I Saw for Myself": Collating Polyphonic Voices in Joe Sacco's Palestine Narratives
  Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, Volume 6 Issue 2 (April 2019)

Book Chapters

• "Undead, Undeader, Undeadest: Narrating the Unevenness of Ecological Crisis in Nana Nkweti's 'It Just Kills You Inside'"
  Forthcoming in An 'Other' Zombie Project (Bloomsbury, 2022)

Editorial

• Special Issue: Cannibalism (co-editor) Exchanges Journal, Vol 7 No. 2

Reviews

• Review: The World In A Grain Of Sand: Postcolonial Literature and Radical Universalism, Nivedita Majumdar
  Forthcoming, Journal of Postcolonial Writing
• October 2018 Review: E.X.O, Roye Okupe
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• February 2018 Review: Transmedial Narratology and Contemporary Media Culture, Jan-Noel Thön
  ImageTexT

Selected Conference Papers

• "In this place, we do not fear pestilence": Africanfuturist Fecundity Outside the World Food System in Tade Thompson’s Rosewater". "Emergence/y", Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE). Virtual Conference (Jul 2021).

• "It isn't all just swallow and soup": Contemporary West African Food Narratives in the UK". "Beyond Censorship?", African Literature Association (ALA) Annual Conference. Virtual Conference (May 2021).

•  "'Home Food' in the Global Supermarket". "The Diasporic Plate: Food in the Contemporary Diasporic World in Times of Crisis", School of Advanced Study, University of London. Virtual Conference (Nov 2020).

• "Gustation/Migration: Food, Domesticity, and Power Imbalance in Imbolo Mbue's Behold the Dreamers". "Craving Planet Earth" Conference, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu (Nov 2019).

• "'The People Who Fill the Building With Smells of Foreign Food': Global Foodways in The Thing Around Your Neck". Postcolonial Studies Association (PSA) Convention, University of Manchester (Sep 2019).

• "'Empty Aisles': Food Deserts and the (In)Convenience Store in The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears". "Institutions of African Literature: Future, Present, Past", African Literature Association (ALA) Annual Conference, Columbus OH (May 2019).

• "Cooking A Global Narrative: West African Food Narratives in the UK". "After Empire" Conference, University of Leeds (Dec 2018).

• "Eating Cameroon, Eating America: Food and Domestic Power Struggles in Imbolo Mbue's Behold the Dreamers". "The Environments of African Literature", African Literature Association (ALA) Annual Conference, Washington D.C. (May 2018).

• "Eating Americanah: Food and Belonging in Adichie's Migration Narrative". Humanitarian Fictions Workshop in association with TORCH, University of Oxford (Apr 2018).

Conference Organisation

• June 2022 Women in World(-)Literature
  Co-organiser
• May 2018 14th Warwick English Postgraduate Symposium
  Organising Committee, University of Warwick
• May 2017 13th Warwick English Postgraduate Symposium.
  Organising Committee, University of Warwick.

Outreach

• 2019/20 Chair of Graduate Student Caucus of the African Literature Assocation (GSCALA)
• 2018/19 Vice Chair of Graduate Student Caucus of the African Literature Association (GSCALA)
• June 2018 Finalist in University of Warwick 3MT competition

Professional Memberships

• Association for the Study of Food and Society (ASFS)
• Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE)
• Postcolonial Studies Association (PSA)
• African Literature Association (ALA)

Dr Fiona Farnsworth

fiona dot farnsworth at warwick dot ac dot uk

Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies

Office Hours: Tue 12-1, Thu 2-3 (H5.43)