Esthie Hugo
Gothic's Ecologies: Literature and Commodity Frontiers from the Plantation to the Present
I am a PhD student in English and Comparative Literary Studies. I am currently working on a project funded by the Leverhulme Trust, which investigates world-literature through the prisms of globalgothic and commodity frontiers. See more here: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/people/niblettmike/worldlit/). I am also, as of January 2022, Associate Lecturer at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.
Publications
Articles:
- “A ‘Violence Just Below the Skin’: Atmospheric Terror and Racial Ecologies in Ben Okri’s In the City of Red Dust,” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies for Literature and Environment, 29, no. 1 (2022). https://academic.oup.com/isle/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isle/isab093/6422474?guestAccessKey=8e448138-c088-40eb-b87c-d42aa79629&fbclid=IwAR3ghjymA29BIG9zDYUxyQce3SGSW88_DfvU_-MExY2-9g81GoeNt2WwHg0
- "Terrors of the House and Field: Saccharine Gothic and Caribbean Plantation Literatures," Interventions: the Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Special Issue: "Commodity Frontiers and World Literature", forthcoming.
- (Co-authored with Michael Niblett, Chris Campbell and Christine Okoth) “Introduction: Commodity Frontiers and World Literature”, Interventions: the Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Special Issue: "Commodity Frontiers and World-Literature", forthcoming.
- "Looking Forward, Looking Back: Animating Magic, Modernity and the African City-Future in Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon", Social Dynamics, 43, 1 (2017): pp. 46-58, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02533952.2017.1345528?journalCode=rsdy20
Book Chapters:
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"Bodies Broken and Minds Lost: Tropical Gothic, Commodity Frontiers, and the Aesthetics of Excess," in The Edinburgh Companion to Globalgothic, eds. Justin D. Edwards & Rebecca Duncan (University of Edinburgh Press, forthcoming 2023).
- co-authored with Nora Castle, "'Growgirls' and Cultured Eggs: Food Futures and Feminism in SF from the Global South", in Technologies of Feminist Speculative Fiction: Gender, Artificial Life, Reproduction, ed. Sherryl Vint and Sümeyra Buran (Springer, forthcoming 2022).
- "A Violence 'Just Below the Skin': Atmospheric Terror and Racial Ecologies from the African Anthropocene", in Gothic in the Anthropocene: Dark Scenes from Damaged Earth, eds. Johan Höglund, Rune Graulund and Justin D. Edwards (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, forthcoming 2022).
- "Pain, Pleasure, and the World-Food-System: Plotting the Afterlife of the Plantation in the Poetry of Grace Nichols", in Literary and Cultural Production, World-Ecology, and the Global Food System, eds. Kerstin Oloff, Michael Niblett and Chris Campbell (London: Palgrave, 2021).
Book Reviews:
- “The Evolution of African Fantasy and Science Fiction”, Fantastika 4, no. 1 (2020): 135 – 138, https://fantastikajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Fantastika-Journal-Volume-4-Issue-1-After-Fantastika.pdf
Conference Papers:
- A ‘Violence Just Below the Skin’: Atmospheric Terror and Racial Ecologies from the African Anthropocene”, Emergence/y: Association for Literature and the Environment, 26 July – 6 August 2021.
- “Reap and Sow: Saccharine Gothic, Vampiric Ecologies, and the (Neo)Plantation Narrative”, ‘Blood on the Leaves/And Blood at the Roots’: Reconsidering Forms of Enslavement and Subjection Across Disciplines, University of Warwick, 25-26 July 2021.
- (with Nora Castle) “‘Growgirls’ and Cultured Eggs: Food Futures and Critical Race Feminism in Speculative Fiction from the Global South”, Just Food: Because It Is Never Just Food, New York University, 9-12 June 2021.
- 'Terrors of the House and Field: Reading for Social Reproduction in Marlon James' The Book of Night Women', Floods and Flows: Changing Environments and Cultures, University of Warwick, 22 February 2020.
- “It is Us Who Groom and Weed Him”: The Gendered Ecology of Sugarcane in the Poetry of Grace Nichols', Postcolonial Studies Association Convention, University of Manchester, 11-13 September 2019.
- 'The Literature of the World-Ecology: Reading for Palm Oil in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart', New Postcolonial Concerns, Postgraduate Symposium, University of Cambridge, 15 June 2019.
- 'Commodity Frontiers and World-Ecological Fiction', The South West and the World-System,: Writing, the Environment and the Archives, University of Exeter, 5 June 2019.
- ‘Looking Forward, Looking Back: animating Magic, Modernity and the African City-Future in Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon’, 17th Triennial Conference of the Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies, Stellenbosch University, July 2016
- 'Hide and Sick: Gothic Pop Culture in the Contemporary South African Moment’, Locating the Gothic Conference, Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, October 2014.
Qualifications:
2016: Masters in Language, Literature and Modernity, University of Cape Town, Distinction (examined by Prof Jennifer Wenzel and Prof Sarah Nuttall).
2013: Honours in English Studies, University of Cape Town, First Class.
Significant Awards:
2021: Winner of the Graduate Student Paper Award, "A Violence 'Just Below the Skin': Atmospheric Terror and Racial Ecologies from the African Anthropocene", Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE).
2019 & 2020: Oppenheimer International Scholarship, PhD study.
2018: PhD Studentship, “World Literature and Commodity Frontiers”, funded by the Leverhulme Trust and based at the University of Warwick’s Department of English and Comparative Literature.
2014: South African National Research Fund Scarce Skills Research Bursary for Masters in English Literature, based at the University of Cape Town's Department of English Language and Literature.
Academic Editorial Work:
1.Young. S. Shakespeare in the Global South: Stories of Oceans Crossed in Contemporary Adaptation. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019, https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/shakespeare-in-the-global-south-9781350035744/
2. Pather, J & Boulle C. Acts of Transgression: Contemporary Live Art in South Africa. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2019, https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/acts-of-transgression/2778269BDCC2922F94779A5A2B3827CA
Teaching:
I have taught on the Modes of Reading module for first year English students at Warwick. In addition to this, I taught on a number of undergraduate courses during my time as a postgraduate at the University of Cape Town's Department of English Language and Literature.
Link to my academia.edu page:
