Ian MacDonald

Ian P. MacDonald received his Ph.D. in African literature and postcolonial theory from Columbia University in 2014. His work probes the intersection of speculative fiction and literature from Africa and the diaspora, and his work in progress, Alter-Africas: Speculative Topographies in African and Diasporic Science Fiction, assesses the ways in which the SF’s own colonial legacy in the travelogue and discovery narrative serves as a combative frame for thinking African futures. He was previously Assistant Professor of English at Wittenberg University in Springfield, OH.

Selected Publications

“‘I Can’t Seem to Go Forward, Therefore I Must Go Back’: Ben Okri’s Anachronistic Utopias.” In Moradewun Adejunmobi and Carli Coetzee (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of African Literature. New York: Routledge. [Forthcoming 2018]

“‘Let Us All Mutate Together’: Cracking the Code in Laing’s Big Bishop Roko and the Altar Gangsters.” The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry 3.3 (Fall 2016).

“The Cybogre Manifesto: Time, Utopia, and Globality in Ngũgĩ’s Wizard of the Crow.”Research in African Literatures 47.1 (Spring 2016).

Specialization Areas

Speculative Fiction and Fantasy

African and Diasporic Literature

Postcolonial Literature and Theory

Utopian Literature

Globalization and Cosmopolitanism

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