Elleke Boehmer talks about Dambudzo Marechera at the English Faculty
https://www.youtube.com/embed/YB5eNeXtAzg
In Episode 4 of the podcast, Dr Niall Munro interviews Professor Elleke Boehmer on top of the University of Oxford's St Cross Building, home to the English Faculty. Elleke Boehmer is Professor of World Literature in English in the English Faculty, University of Oxford. She is the Director of the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing and Professorial Governing Body Fellow at Wolfson College. Elleke is a founding figure in the field of colonial and postcolonial literary studies, and internationally known for her research in the anglophone literatures of empire and anti-empire. As she discusses here, she wrote the first PhD at the University of Oxford entirely on African literature, and encountered Marechera as part of that work. Elleke describes how she also heard about Marechera's exploits from the Nigerian-British poet and novelist Ben Okri, who knew Marechera during his time in London. Elleke also talks about Marechera's homelessness, and considers Marechera's significance both as an African, postcolonial writer and a global or 'Afropolitan' one.
