Sarah Nuttall

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Sarah Nuttall
Born
Durban, South Africa
OccupationProfessor at University of the Witwatersrand
SpouseAchille Mbembe
AwardsRhodes Scholarship
Academic background
EducationUniversity of Natal
University of Cape Town
Alma materUniversity of Oxford (DPhil)
Doctoral advisorKate Flint
Academic work
DisciplineLiterary studies
Cultural studies
InstitutionsStellenbosch University, University of the Witwatersrand
Main interestsVisual culture and aesthetics, memory, urban theory, autobiography

Sarah Nuttall is a South African academic and cultural critic who is professor of literary and cultural studies at the University of the Witwatersrand. She was director of the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research from 2013 to 2022. She has published widely about post-apartheid South Africa, including on topics in literary theory, cultural theory, urban theory, and aesthetics.

Academic background[edit]

Born in Durban, Nuttall is the daughter of Jolyon Nuttall, a journalist and newspaper manager; his father, in turn, was Neville Nuttall, a columnist, teacher, and close friend of Alan Paton's.[1][2]

Nuttall completed a bachelor's degree at the University of Natal and a master's degree at the University of Cape Town.[3] Come of age at the height of apartheid, she was involved in anti-apartheid student politics while at university.[2] In 1994,[3] she completed her PhD at University of Oxford, where was supervised by Kate Flint, mentored by Liz Gunner, and funded by a Rhodes Scholarship.[2]

Academic positions[edit]

Between 1997 and 2001, Nuttall was a lecturer in the English department at Stellenbosch University.[3] In 2001, she moved to the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) to join the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WiSER) as a senior researcher, a position she held until 2010.[3] During this period, in 2003, the Mail & Guardian named Nuttall as one of five academics expected to "emerge as key figures in our public life over the next 10 years", in Nuttall's case as a "literature specialist... pushing the boundaries of social and cultural analysis".[4]

In 2011, Nuttall left Wits and WiSER to return, briefly, to Stellenbosch; she was appointed director of WiSER in early 2013.[2] She said that at WiSER she would attempt to "desegregate the conversations, bringing in people around the table and making sure the conversations are as wide as possible".[2] She served two terms as WiSER director, leaving the office at the and 2022.[5] She retained her research position at the institute and remained a professor of literary and cultural studies at Wits.[3][6] She also has an appointment at the European Graduate School[3] and is a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa.[7]

Scholarship and publications[edit]

Nuttall's 2009 monograph, Entanglement: Literary and Cultural Reflections on Post-apartheid, is a collection of essays about post-apartheid South Africa, loosely connected by the theme of "entanglement", which Nuttall defined as "a critical sub-terrain of latent potential in the post-apartheid context".[8] Describing the post-apartheid moment as a "world of surfaces", Nuttall argued that articulating and interpreting that moment required horizontal rather than symptomatic readings, renewed interested in literalism, eschewing the "apartheid optic", and giving texts "surfaces" akin to visual art.[8]

Nuttall edited Beautiful Ugly: African and Diaspora Aesthetics (2007), a collection of essays on African aesthetics,[9] which won the 2007 Arnold Rubin Outstanding Publication Award.[10] She has also co-edited several collections, including Negotiating the Past: The Making of Memory in South Africa (1998) with Carli Coetzee, about the production of memory in post-apartheid South Africa;[11] and, with Liz McGregor, At Risk (2007) and Load Shedding (2009), two collections of essays about contemporary life in South Africa.[12] With her husband, Achille Mbembe, she has written about Johannesburg as an Afropolis,[13][14] and Nuttall and Mbembe co-edited Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis (2008), an influential book about the city.[15]

Personal life[edit]

Nuttall and Mbembe met in Nairobi in 1997; met again when Nuttall was at Stellenbosch, while Mbembe was in Cape Town writing On the Postcolony; and worked together at WiSER. They live in Johannesburg and have two children.[2]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "'I was there': Essays that map a life". The Mail & Guardian. 4 January 2019. Retrieved 27 May 2023.
  2. ^ a b c d e f "Wits all the Wiser for its vital literary couple". The Mail & Guardian. 14 June 2013. Retrieved 27 May 2023.
  3. ^ a b c d e f "Sarah Nuttall". The European Graduate School. Retrieved 27 May 2023.
  4. ^ "Climbing to the top of the greasy pole". The Mail & Guardian. 20 December 2003. Retrieved 27 May 2023.
  5. ^ "Sarah Nuttall Finishes her Second Term as WiSER Director". Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research. 1 January 2023. Retrieved 27 May 2023.
  6. ^ "Sarah Nuttall". Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research. Retrieved 27 May 2023.
  7. ^ "Members". ASSAf. Retrieved 27 May 2023.
  8. ^ a b "Nuttall urges an embrace of the quickly shifting surfaces". Archive & Public Culture – University of Cape Town. Retrieved 27 May 2023.
  9. ^ "Eating Africa: politics of the stomach". The Mail & Guardian. 22 January 2008. Retrieved 27 May 2023.
  10. ^ "The Arts Council of the African Studies Association 14th Triennial Symposium". Artthrob. 11 May 2007. Retrieved 27 May 2023.
  11. ^ "Many versions of the past". The Mail & Guardian. 3 April 1998. Retrieved 27 May 2023.
  12. ^ Salafranca, Arja (2 July 2009). "Load Shedding illuminates South Africans' lives through shared experiences". LitNet. Retrieved 27 May 2023.
  13. ^ Mbembe, Achille; Nuttall, Sarah (1 September 2004). "Writing the World from an African Metropolis". Public Culture. 16 (3): 347–372. doi:10.1215/08992363-16-3-347. ISSN 0899-2363.
  14. ^ Nuttall, Sarah; Mbembe, Achille (2007). "Afropolis: From Johannesburg". PMLA. 122 (1): 281–288. doi:10.1632/pmla.2007.122.1.281. ISSN 0030-8129. S2CID 162359995.
  15. ^ Devarenne, Nicole (2010). "Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis (review)". Modernism/Modernity. 17 (1): 258–260. doi:10.1353/mod.0.0175. ISSN 1080-6601. S2CID 144994984.

External links[edit]

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