The vision of the English Academy is of Southern Africa as a democratic society in which effective English is available to all who wish to use it, where competent instruction in the language is readily accessible and in which the country’s diverse linguistic ecology is respected.
Mission statement: The English Academy is concerned with all forms and functions of English. It interests itself in English in education, promotes research and debate, organizes lectures, makes representations about language matters, rewards excellence and fosters the creative, critical and scholarly talents of users (and would-be users) of English.
The English Academy is a registered non-profit organization, founded in 1961. It is governed by a Council and is administered by an Executive Committee elected by and from Council. Membership is open to graduates and non-graduates alike who share our mission and vision. Membership forms may be obtained from the office ([email protected]) or from our website: http://www.englishacademy.co.za.
The Academy’s information brochure can be obtained from Prof. Gray at [email protected]. This is a synoptic history of the English Academy and highlights its flagship publication, The English Academy Review: A Journal of English Studies, as well as its online journal Teaching English Today—an indispensable forum for teachers of English. The Academy hosts triennial international conferences in the various provinces of South Africa. The next international conference will be held at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein on 7 and 8 December 2023. The theme is “Ways of Reading: Literature and Literacy”.
Council of the English Academy 2021–2024
President: Prof. O. Seda
Deputy President: Prof. R. P. Chetty
Honorary Life Vice Presidents: Prof. R. A. Gray, Prof. G. L. Haresnape, Prof. E. R. Jenkins, Prof. P. J. H. Titlestad
Regional Vice-Presidents: Dr B. Basel, Dr A. R. de Villiers, Dr B. Govinden, Prof. R. A. Gray, Prof. H. Israel, Prof. P. J. H. Titlestad
Executive Committee: Prof. O. Seda (President), Prof. R. P. Chetty (Deputy President, Prof. N. Akingbe, Prof. G. Fincham, Prof. R. A. Gray (Hon. Treasurer & Office Manager), Prof. M. Z. Malaba, Dr I. Noomé, Prof. L. J. Rafapa, Prof. O. Seda, Mr L. Staphorst, Dr R. de Villiers (Honorary Secretary)
Additional Council Members: Prof. J. Alexander, Prof. A. Akpome, Ms C. Fratini, Prof. C. Livingston, Prof. N. Maake, Mr R. Sharman, Dr M. G. Venter
Corporate Member: Amazwi South African Museum of Literature
Administrative Officer: Ms Karin Basel
Patrons: Prof. Pitika Ntuli, Dr Sindiwe Magona
Sponsors and trust funds: Department of Sports, Arts and Culture, National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, Percy Baneshik, Joe Garmeson and Laurence Green Trust Funds, Gwen Knowles-Williams bursary fund.
National Archivists
One copy of each issue of the English Academy Review should be sent to and is archived by:
The State Legal Deposit Libraries:
The Manager, Bessie Head Library (Msunduzi Municipal Library) (MML)—Pietermaritzburg. Legal Deposit Section, P.O. Box 415, Pietermaritzburg, 3200 e-mail: [email protected]
The National Librarian, National Library of South Africa—Cape Town Campus
(NLSA-CT). Legal Deposit Section, P.O. Box 496, Cape Town, 8000 e-mail: [email protected]
The National Librarian, National Library of South Africa—Pretoria Campus
(NLSA-PTA)—Pretoria. Legal Deposit Section, P.O. Box 397, Pretoria, 0001 e-mail: [email protected]
The Chief Librarian, Legal Deposit Section, Parliamentary Information Centre
(Library of Parliament) P.O. Box 18, Cape Town, 8000 e-mail: [email protected]
The Manager, Legal Deposit Section, Mangaung Public Library Services (MLS)—
Bloemfontein Public Library—P.O. Box 1029, Bloemfontein, 9300 e-mail: [email protected]
The Head, Legal Deposit Section, National Film, Video and Sound Archives (NFA), Private Bag X236, Pretoria 0001 e-mail: [email protected]
Additional Academy Archivists:
Amazwi South African Museum of Literature —Archival Platform, 87 Beaufort Street, Makanda. www.archivalplatform.org
The University of the Witwatersrand Wartenweiler Library—Braamfontein, Johannesburg. Private Bag 3, Wits, 2050 c/o e-mail: [email protected]
Forthcoming issues of EAR
Issue 40 (2) 2023 due in October will be an open issue.
The English Academy Review is joining the digital age hand-in-hand with Unisa Press and Taylor & Francis. Submission of articles will henceforth be made direct onto Unisa Press’s newly created electronic platform by the contributor, who will receive an immediate acknowledgement. Once uploaded, the Editor-in-Chief will allocate peer reviewers and the system will monitor progress and writers will be able to check the progression thereof. All paid-up members will receive free open access to both issues in any given year. Submit articles directly to https://unisapressjournals.co.za/index.php/EAR/about/submissions
Articles should be typed double spaced and using the Times New Roman font (11 point).
Articles sent direct to the Editor will not be acknowledged, nor will they be considered.
Articles that do not follow the Style Guide in the inside back cover of the English Academy Review will be returned to the contributor for re-editing before peer review. This includes those typed using macros.
Please see the inside back cover and the journal’s website at Unisa Press Journals (https://unisapressjournals.co.za/index.php/EAR/about/submissions) or Taylor & Francis (http://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=racr20&page=instructions) for further information on the preparation of manuscripts.
Discussions relevant to literature, language, and education, as well as poetry, short stories, flash fiction, book reviews and essays or interviews are most welcome.
Call for papers for Issue 41 (1) 2024, deadline 30 September 2023:
Ecocriticism Issue: 2024
In Global Ecologies and the Environmental Humanities, Elizabeth DeLoughrey writes:
Postcolonial approaches emphasise how experiences of environmental violence, rupture and displacement are central ecological challenges across the Global South, while at the same time identifying possibilities for imaginative recuperation that are compatible with anticolonial positions …
Here are some topics derived from DeLoughrey’s book, and from two other sources, on which we invite contributors to expand. Contributors should feel free to address only part of a quotation, if this better fits their material.
“Postcolonial approaches to environmental texts have elucidated how writers and artists complicate canonical and colonial legacies as well as develop new forms and media.”
“Scholarship is particularly vulnerable to naturalizing dominant forms of environmental discourse, particularly those that do not fundamentally engage with questions of difference, power and privilege.”
“Drawing from the methods of postcolonial and feminist scholarship, environmental humanities researchers treat knowledge as always culturally situated.”
“Of all the tropes of ecological study, place is perhaps the most profound in terms of history, knowledge, ontology and experience.”
“Mining companies have exploited the rhetoric of sustainability and creativity to provide cover for their role in environmental despoliation and the displacement of tribal peoples.”
“The emergence of what Hulme calls an ‘unseen neural network’ inscribes new morphologies for an increasingly maritime world.”
“In the last decade, the field of postcolonial ecocriticism has offered important new perspectives on how environmental change is entwined with the narratives, histories, and material practices of colonialism ad globalization.”
“Language and narrative, including the narrative work of the visual, are integral to conceptualizing the legacies of rupture and the possibilities of imaginative recuperation and transformation.”
“Two historic tasks arise from the hyper-separation of human identity from nature: they can be summed up as the tasks of (re)situating humans in ecological terms and non-humans in ethical terms.”
From Bill Ashcroft, “A Climate of Hope”: “In a real sense, silence is only silence to the colonizing society whose culture of subjugation has brought with them an inability to hear … a silent landscape is not only grounded in an inability to speak about the land, but the absence of many of the voices that were once present to articulate it.”
From Barry Lopez, Horizon: “Astonishing to me is that it is possible to find in the ‘totality of patterns’ of a particular piece of music a unity that compares with the unified biological, geological, and geographical ecologies of a landscape, many of which specifics a composer might actually be unaware of.”
“If everything that comprises a particular stretch of land – its still and moving waters, its trees and animals, its weather and footpaths and its rocks – is viewed as a community to which human beings, too, belong, it can neither be sold nor owned, even by the people who feel they belong to it.”
“Traveling encourages the revision of received wisdoms and the shedding of prejudices. It turns the mind toward a consideration of context and releases it from the dictatorship of absolute truths about humanity.”
Submit articles directly to https://unisapressjournals.co.za/index.php/EAR/about/submissions
Membership
The Council may elect to full membership:
Any person who aligns him- or herself with the Academy’s Vision and Mission.
Institutions or corporations that share the Academy’s Vision or identifies with its Mission.
Joint membership is available to couples/families at a reduced fee. In addition to separate application forms for the two applicants, a covering letter must be attached requesting Joint Membership.
Concessionary membership is offered on application to retirees and full-time students.
Subscriptions are due and payable within 30 days of date of dispatch of notice of election and thereafter annually on 1 April. Rates are obtainable from the Academy Office: e-mail address [email protected].