Gabeba Baderoon
Education
Professional Bio
Gabeba Baderoon is an associate professor of women’s, gender and sexuality studies, African studies, and comparative literature and holds courtesy appointments in the Social Thought Program and the School of International Affairs. She co-directs the African Feminist Initiative at Penn State with Alicia Decker and Maha Marouan. Baderoon received a doctoral degree in English from the University of Cape Town and has held Post-doctoral fellowships in the Africana Research Center and the “Islam, African Publics and Religious Values” Project. Among her honors are the Sarah Baartman Senior Fellowship at the University of Cape Town, an Extraordinary Professorship of English at Stellenbosch University, and fellowships at the African Gender Institute, the Nordic Africa Institute, Bellagio and the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study. Baderoon is the author of Regarding Muslims: from Slavery to Post-Apartheid, which received the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences Best Non-fiction Monograph Award, and the poetry collections The Dream in the Next Body, A hundred silences and The History of Intimacy. Her poetry has been recognized with the Daimler award, the Elisabeth Eybers Poetry Prize, the University of Johannesburg Prize for South African Writing and a Best Poetry Book Award from the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences. Baderoon also co-edited the award-winning essay collection, Surfacing: on Being Black and Feminist, with Desiree Lewis.
Book Descriptions
The Dream in the Next Body (Kwela/Snailpress, 2005) https://www.nb.co.za/en/view-book/?id=9780795701979
Gabeba’s debut collection, The Dream in the Next Body, sold out its first print run in six weeks and ultimately sold over 3,000 copies. Its poems received the Daimler Award for South African Poetry in 2005.
A hundred silences (Kwela/Snailpress, 2006), https://www.nb.co.za/en/view-book/?id=9780795702280
This second collection explores the formal and thematic range she had established as her poetic terrain in The Dream in the Next Body. “The pen,” the final poem in A hundred silences, was the subject of an episode of Poetry Unbound. The collection was a finalist for the University of Johannesburg Prize for South African Writing.
The History of Intimacy (Kwela, 2018, Northwestern, 2021), https://www.nb.co.za/en/view-book/?id=9780795708886
The History of Intimacy was met with broad acclaim and received the Elisabeth Eybers Poetry Prize, the University of Johannesburg Prize for South African Writing and the Best Poetry Book award from the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences. A U.S. edition came out with Northwestern University Press in 2021 and features a new poem, “Green Pincushion Proteas.”
Regarding Muslims: From Slavery to Post-Apartheid (Wits, 2014), https://archivewitspress.co.za/catalogue/regarding-muslims/
Regarding Muslims engages with the colonial and contemporary archives of images of Islam in South Africa, ranging from paintings of Muslim slaves to the vibrant scope of post-apartheid literary and artistic portrayals. Regarding Muslims received a Best Non-Fiction Monograph Award from the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences in 2017.
Surfacing: On Being Black and Feminist in South Africa (Wits, 2021), https://archivewitspress.co.za/catalogue/surfacing/
Surfacing is partly an archive and partly an inspirational source for ongoing debate and critique. The collection demonstrates that radical knowledge-making is a collaborative, interactive and continuing struggle to imagine human freedoms. Surfacing received the Best Edited Collection Award from the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Science.
Publications
Regarding Muslims: From Slavery to Post-apartheid
- Publication Date: 2014
- Website: https://www.witspress.co.za/page/detail/Regarding-Muslims/?K=9781868147694
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About the Book:
How do Muslims fit into South Africa’s well-known narrative of colonialism, apartheid and postapartheid?
South Africa is infamous for apartheid, but the country’s foundation was laid by 176 years of slavery from 1658 to 1834, which formed a crucible of war, genocide and systemic sexual violence that continues to haunt the country today. Enslaved people from East Africa, India and South East Asia, many of whom were Muslim, would eventually constitute the majority of the population of the Cape Colony, the first of the colonial territories that would eventually form South Africa.
Drawing on an extensive popular and official archive, Regarding Muslims analyses the role of Muslims from South Africa’s founding moments to the contemporary period and points to the resonance of these discussions beyond South Africa. It argues that the 350-year archive of images documenting the presence of Muslims in South Africa is central to understanding the formation of concepts of race, sexuality and belonging.
In contrast to the themes of extremism and alienation that dominate Western portrayals of Muslims, Regarding Muslims explores an extensive repertoire of picturesque Muslim figures in South African popular culture, which oscillates with more disquieting images that occasionally burst into prominence during moments of crisis. This pattern is illustrated through analyses of etymology, popular culture, visual art, jokes, bodily practices, oral narratives and literature. The book ends with the complex vision of Islam conveyed in the postapartheid period.