Evan Mwangi

Evan Mwangi is the Melville J. Herskovits Professor of African Studies and Professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies at Northwestern University. He earned a First Class Honours degree and a Ph.D. in literature from the University of Nairobi in 2002. Mwangi joined Northwestern in 2005 following two years of teaching at Ohio State University. His research centers on the intersection of nationalism, gender, and sexuality in canonical and popular artistic expressions within 20th-century Anglophone African literature, relating local texts to global theories. Specializations include Environmental Humanities, 20th- and 21st-century British Literature, Global Anglophone Literature, Critical Theory, Animal Studies, Postcolonial and Diaspora Studies, and Gender and Sexuality Studies. Mwangi has published extensively on authors such as Nazizi Hirji, Chinua Achebe, K. Sello Duiker, Amandina Lihamba, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, David Maillu, Henry ole Kulet, Margaret Ogola, Nuruddin Farah, and Francis Imbuga.

Key publications include The Postcolonial Animal: African Literature and Posthuman Ethics (University of Michigan Press, 2019), which examines vegan impulses in African writing from indigenous sources; Translation in African Contexts (Kent State University Press, 2017), critiquing translation theories through works by Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Gakaara wa Wanjau, Julius Nyerere, and others; Africa Writes Back to Self: Metafiction, Gender, Sexuality (State University of New York Press, 2009); and co-authored The Columbia Guide to East African Literature in English Since 1945 (Columbia University Press, 2007). Earlier books are Bildad Kaggia: Voice of the People (Sasa Sema Publications, 2001) and Guide to Encounters from Africa (Macmillan Kenya, 2000). Articles and poems appear in Mwangaza, TDR: The Drama Review, Research in African Literatures, African Studies Review, ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature, English Studies in Africa, The Nairobi Journal of Literature, PMLA, and Africa Today. Mwangi received the Melville J. Herskovits Professorship in 2022 and the CODESRIA Development of Social Science Research in Africa Fellowship in 2021 for teaching African literature at Machakos University in Kenya. He is currently developing projects on global rewritings of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Indian Ocean literatures and philosophies.

Professional Email: evan-mwangi@northwestern.edu