Dr Dianne Schwerdt

Senior Lecturer
Postgraduate Coordinator
Room Napier Building, Rm 607 
Phone 830 35622
Email dianne.schwerdt@adelaide.edu.au

Research Interests

Dianne has worked mainly in the area of postcolonial theory and fiction with a particular interest in African and African Diasporic writing. Her research interests include: resistance narratives, the colonial experience, revisionist history and fiction, constructions of identity and gender, the politics of silence, African women writers, the literature of migration and exile, and asylum narratives. Her publications include essays on Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Chinua Achebe and Abdulrazak Gurnah and she is currently engaged in research for a book on the Kenyan dissident writer, Ngugi wa Thiong'o. From 1995-2001 she was editor of the CRNLE Journal which published work in the field of New Literatures in English. Her publications include Re-Imagining Africa: New Critical Perspectives, a co-edited collection of essays on contemporary African writing in the Horizons in Post-Colonial Studies series (Nova 2001). She is currently working on several papers on memory, narrative and the (de)construction of self in exilic writing from Australia and Africa.

Recent Publications

Co-edited books

Schwerdt, Dianne and Sue Hosking. Extensions. Essays in English Studies from Shakespeare to the Spice Girls . Adelaide: Wakefield Press, 1999.
Schwerdt, Dianne and Sue Kussew Ed. Re-Imagining Africa: New Critical Perspectives . Horizons in Post-Colonial Studies. New York: Nova Science, 2001.

Book chapters

Schwerdt, Dianne. 'Monstering the Interior: Interior Journeys over Exterior Landscapes'. Re Imagining Africa: New Critical Perspectives . Horizons in Post-Colonial Studies. New York: Nova Science, 2001.
Schwerdt, Dianne. 'Dancing Masks: Narrating the Colonial Experience in Achebe's Things Fall Apart' . eXtensions: Essays in English Studies from Shakespeare to the Spice Girls . Ed. Schwerdt, Dianne and Sue Hosking. Adelaide: Wakefield Press, 1999.

Journal Articles

Schwerdt, Dianne. 'Looking in on Paradise: Race, Gender and Power in Abdulrazak Gurnah's Paradise '. Bayreuth African Studies 42. Bayreuth: Bayreuth University, 1997.
Schwerdt, Dianne. ' Tempora Mutantur : Charting the Changes in African Writing'. CRNLE Reviews Journal Special Double Issue1 & 2 (1998): 64-75.
Schwerdt, Dianne. 'Re-Inventing the Centre in the Marginal Space'. CRNLE Reviews Journal 2 (1994): 136-45.
Schwerdt, Dianne. 'Re-locating the Margins-Occluding the Centre'. New Literatures Review Summer South 25 (1993): 83-91.
Schwerdt, Dianne. 'Deconstructing Cultural Imperialism: African Literature and the Politics of Language'. southern Review 24.1 (1991): 57-68.
Schwerdt, Dianne. 'Reassessing Paradise: Landmarks and Landscapes in South African English Literature'. CRNLE Reviews Journal 1 (1991): 52-9.