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Professor David Johnson

David Johnson photo

Profile summary

  • Emeritus Professor
  • Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences
  • School of Arts & Humanities
  • English & Creative Writing
  • david.johnson

Professional biography

I joined The Open University in 1999. In the 1980s, I completed a law degree and MA in English at the University of Cape Town, and then in 1992 a PhD at Sussex University. Before joining The Open University, I taught for five years in South Africa at the University of Kwazulu-Natal (Durban).

Research interests

My research interests include Post-colonial Literature and Theory, Southern African Studies, Law and Literature, Labour History, Shakespeare Studies, African Print Culture, and Travel Writing. I have written three monographs, Shakespeare and South Africa (Oxford University Press, 1996), Imagining the Cape Colony. History, Literature and the South African Nation (Edinburgh University Press/ UCT Press, 2012), and Dreaming of Freedom in South Africa. Literature between Critique and Utopia (Edinburgh Univeristy Press/ UCT Press, 2020); was the principal author with Steve Pete and Max du Plessis of Jurisprudence: A South African Perspective (Butterworths, 2001); and was the co-editor with Prem Poddar of A Historical Companion to Postcolonial Literatures in English (Edinburgh/ Columbia University Press, 2005), with Caroline Davis of The Book in Africa: Critical Debates (Palgrave, 2015), with David Hutchinson of Stuart Hood. Twentieth-Century Partisan (Cambridge Scholars, 2020), with Henry Dee of 'I See You': The Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union of Africa, 1919-1930 (HiPSA Press, 2022), and with Noor Nieftagodien and Lucien van der Walt of Labour Struggles in Southern Africa: The Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union of Africa, 1919-1949 (HSRC Press, 2023). I was series editor with Ania Loomba of the Edinburgh University Press series Postcolonial Literary Studies, and am series editor of the ongoing Edinburgh University Press series Key Texts in Anti-colonial Thought. I was also a co-investigator on the AHRC-funded project ‘The Indian Ocean: Narratives of Literature and Law’.

Teaching interests

My teaching interests lie principally in Postcolonial Literature, and especially Southern African literature and history. However, during the last two decades, I have written Open University teaching material on a variety of writers, and across a range of periods and genres (Aristotle, Shakespeare, Swift, Goethe, Byron, Cugoano, Prince, Wedderburn, Bushman Folklore, Grassic Gibbon, post-apartheid poetry, Hughes, Calvino, CLR James, Salih, Le Guin, Ngugi and Gurnah). Some of this teaching material has been co-published: with Richard Danson Brown Shakespeare 1609: ‘Cymbeline’ and the ‘Sonnets’ (Macmillan, 2000); edited with Richard Danson Brown A Shakespeare Reader: Sources and Criticism (Macmillan, 2000); edited The Popular and the Canonical. Debating Twentieth-Century Literature 1940-2000 (Routledge, 2005); edited with Suman Gupta A Twentieth-Century Literature Reader: Texts and Debates (Routledge, 2005); and edited with Anita Pacheco The Renaissance and Long Eighteenth Century (Bloomsbury, 2012).

Publications

‘With the Abyssinian Armies, in Defence of Africa’s Only Native State’: Varieties of South African Anti-Fascism, 1930s–1960s (2022-01-04)
Johnson, David
South African Historical Journal, 74(1) (pp. 55-74)

An Interview with Ania Loomba and Suvir Kaul (2019-03)
Johnson, David
Wasafiri, 34(1) (pp. 52-57)

Clements Kadalie, the ICU, and the Language of Freedom (2015-12)
Johnson, David
English in Africa, 42(3) (pp. 43-69)

Fanon’s travels in postcolonial theory and post-apartheid politics (2013-04)
Johnson, David
College Literature, 40(2) (pp. 52-80)

Representations of Cape Slavery in South African Literature (2012)
Johnson, David
History Compass, 10(8) (pp. 549-561)

Introduction to Samuel Eusebius Hudson's The Virtuoso (c. 1790) (2011-05)
Johnson, David
English in Africa, 38(1) (pp. 9-15)

Representing Cape slavery: Literature, law, and history (2010-12)
Johnson, David
Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 46(5) (pp. 504-516)

British models of colonial governance: Adam Smith and John Bruce on the Cape Colony (2010)
Johnson, David
The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, 51(1-2) (pp. 103-127)

Historical and literary re-iterations of Dutch settler Republicanism (2010)
Johnson, David
South African Historical Journal, 62(3) (pp. 463-486)

Remembering the Khoikhoi victory over Dom Francisco Almeida at the Cape in 1510 (2009-03)
Johnson, David
Postcolonial Studies, 12(1) (pp. 107-130)

Representing the Cape 'Hottentots', from the French Enlightenment to post-apartheid South Africa (2007-07)
Johnson, David
Eighteenth-Century Studies, 40(4) (pp. 525-552)

Literatures of nation and migration: Charles Mungoshi, Nadine Gordimer, and the postcolonial (2001)
Johnson, David
Alternation, 8(2) (pp. 36-54)

Editorial: Travellers' tales: alternative traditions (2001)
Johnson, David
Wasafiri(34) (pp. 1-2)

De Mist, Race and Nation (1998)
Johnson, David
Alternation, 5(1) (pp. 85-97)

Literature for the rainbow nation: The case of sol Plaatje's Mhudi (1994)
Johnson, David
Journal of Literary Studies, 10(3-4) (pp. 345-358)

Importing metropolitan Post-colonials (1994)
Johnson, David
Current Writing, 6(1) (pp. 73-85)

Starting Positions: the Social Function of Literature in the Cape (1993-12)
Johnson, David
Journal of Southern African Studies, 19(4) (pp. 615-633)

Aspects of a Liberal Education: Late Nineteenth-Century Attitudes to Race, from Cambridge to the Cape Colony (1993)
Johnson, David
History Workshop Journal, 36(1) (pp. 162-182)

Dreaming of Freedom in South Africa: Literature between Critique and Utopia (2019-12-31)
Johnson, David
ISBN : 9781474430210 | Publisher : Edinburgh University Press | Published : Edinburgh

Imagining the Cape Colony. History, Literature and the South African Nation (2011-12)
Johnson, David
ISBN : 9780748643080 | Publisher : Edinburgh University Press | Published : Edinburgh

Jurisprudence: a South African perspective (2001)
Johnson, David; Pete, Steve and Du Plessis, Max
ISBN : 409034126 | Publisher : Butterworths | Published : Durban, South Africa

Shakespeare and South Africa (1996)
Johnson, David
ISBN : 978-0198183150 | Publisher : Clarendon Press | Published : Oxford

Introduction (2023-01)
Johnson, David; Nieftagodien, Noor and Van der Walt, Lucien
In: Johnson, David; Nieftagodien, Noor and Van der Walt, Lucien eds. Labour Struggles in Southern Africa, 1919-1949. New Perspectives on the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (ICU) (viii-xix)
ISBN : 978-0-7969-2641-8 | Publisher : HSRC Press | Published : Johannesburg, South Africa

The Romance and the Tragedy of the ICU (2023-01)
Johnson, David
In: Johnson, David; Nieftagodien, Noor and Van der Walt, Lucien eds. Labour Struggles in Southern Africa, 1919-1949. New Perspectives on the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (ICU) (pp. 181-194)
ISBN : 978-0-7969-2641-8 | Publisher : HSRC Press | Published : Johannesburg, South Africa

Stuart Hood’s search for community: Novels beyond the nation (2020-09-01)
Johnson, David
In: Hutchison, David and Johnson, David eds. Stuart Hood, Twentieth-Century Partisan (pp. 207-224)
ISBN : 978-1-5275-5447-4 | Publisher : Cambridge Scholars | Published : Newcastle

Introduction (2020-09-01)
Johnson, David and Hutchison, David
In: Hutchison, David and Johnson, David eds. Stuart Hood, Twentieth-Century Partisan (pp. 1-7)
ISBN : 978-1-5275-5447-4 | Publisher : Cambridge Scholars | Published : Newcastle

Translated by Stuart Hood (2020-09-01)
Watts, Stephen and Johnson, David
In: Hutchison, David and Johnson, David eds. Stuart Hood, Twentieth-Century Partisan (pp. 172-187)
ISBN : 978-1-5275-5447-4 | Publisher : Cambridge Scholars | Published : Newcastle

The limits of African nationalism: from anti-apartheid resistance to postcolonial critique (2018-06-30)
Johnson, David
In: Deckard, Sharae and Varma, Rashmi eds. Marxism, Postcolonial Theory and the Future of Critique: Critical Engagements with Benita Parry. Routledge Research in Postcolonial Literatures (pp. 191-212)
ISBN : 9781138186118 | Publisher : Routledge | Published : New York

Anti-apartheid people's histories and post-apartheid nationalist biographies (2017-12-12)
Johnson, David
In: Choudry, Aziz and Vally, Salim eds. Reflections on Knowledge, Learning and Social Movements: History's Schools (pp. 88-103)
ISBN : 9781138059108 | Publisher : Routledge | Published : London and New York

Coriolanus in South Africa (2015-08-31)
Johnson, David
In: Smith, Bruce R. ed. The World's Shakespeare, 1660-Present. The Cambridge Guide to the Worlds of Shakespeare (pp. 1235-1241)
ISBN : 9780521113946 | Publisher : Cambridge University Press | Published : Cambridge, UK

Print culture and imagining the Union of South Africa (2015-03)
Johnson, David
In: Davis, Caroline and Johnson, David eds. The Book in Africa: Critical Debates. New Direction in Book History (pp. 105-127)
ISBN : 9781137401618 | Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan | Published : Basingstoke

Literary and Cultural Criticism in South Africa (2012)
Johnson, David
In: Attwell, David and Attridge, Derek eds. The Cambridge History of South African Literature (pp. 818-837)
ISBN : 9780521199285 | Publisher : Cambridge University Press | Published : Cambridge

Migrancy and Thabo Mbeki's African Renaissance (2007)
Johnson, David
In: Gupta, Suman and Omoniyi, Tope eds. The Cultures of Economic Migration: International Perspectives. Studies in migration and diaspora (pp. 127-140)
ISBN : 9781315615264 | Publisher : Ashgate | Published : Aldershot

African land for the American empire: the proto-imperialism of Benjamin Stout (2005-04)
Johnson, David
In: Hooper, Glenn ed. Landscape and empire, 1770-2000 (pp. 45-64)
ISBN : 754606872 | Publisher : Ashgate | Published : Aldershot, UK

Theorizing the Loss of Land: Griqua Land Claims in Southern Africa, 1874-1998 (2003-12)
Johnson, David
In: Eng, David L. and Kazanjian, David eds. Loss: the politics of mourning (pp. 278-299)
ISBN : 520232356 | Publisher : University of California Press | Published : Berkeley, US

Land, identity and social conflict: the World Bank and South Africa's post-apartheid land reform (2003)
Johnson, David
In: Gupta, Suman; Basu, Tapan and Chattarji, Subarno eds. India in the age of globalization : contemporary discourses and texts (pp. 275-298)
ISBN : 8187614129 | Publisher : Nehru Memorial Museum and Library | Published : New Delhi, India

Talking about Revolution: Lady Anne Barnard in France, Ireland and the Cape Colony (2002-10-04)
Johnson, David
In: Hooper, Glenn and Graham, Colin eds. Irish and Postcolonial Writing: History, Theory, Practice (pp. 157-177)
ISBN : 0 3339 2966 7 | Publisher : Macmillan/Palgrave | Published : Basingstoke, UK

Violence and philosophy: Nathaniel Merriman, A. W. Schlegel and Jack Cade (2000-03-23)
Johnson, David
In: Joughin, John J. ed. Philosophical Shakespeares (pp. 68-85)
ISBN : 9780415173889 | Publisher : Routledge | Published : London

'The first rainbow nation? The Griqua in Post-apartheid South Africa' (2000-03-20)
Johnson, David
In: Poddar, Prem ed. Translating Nations. Dolphin (30) (pp. 115-128)
ISBN : 87-7288-381-2 | Publisher : Aarhus University Press | Published : Aarhus

From the colonial to the post-colonial: Shakespeare and education in Africa (1998-09-03)
Johnson, David
In: Loomba, Ania and Orkin, Martin eds. Post-colonial Shakespeares (pp. 218-234)
ISBN : 9780415173865 | Publisher : Routledge | Published : London

South African Criticism (1994)
Johnson, David
In: Benson, Eugene and Conolly, L. W. eds. The Routledge Encyclopaedia of Post-colonial Literatures in English (pp. 306-309)
Publisher : Routledge

The Edinburgh Companion to British Colonial Periodicals (2024-08)
Johnson, David; Finkelstein, David and Davis, Caroline eds.
Edinburgh Companions to Literature and the Humanities
ISBN : 9781399500630 | Publisher : Edinburgh University Press | Published : Edinburgh

Labour Struggles in Southern Africa, 1919-1949: New Perspectives on the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (ICU) (2023-01)
Johnson, David; Nieftagodien, Noor and Van der Walt, Lucien eds.
ISBN : 978-0-7969-2641-8 | Publisher : HSRC Press | Published : Johannesburg, South Africa

'I See You': The Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union of Africa, 1919-1930 (2022)
Johnson, David and Dee, Henry eds.
Southern African Historical Documents
ISBN : 9780994720788 | Publisher : Historical Publications Southern Africa | Published : Cape Town

Stuart Hood: Twentieth-Century Partisan (2020-09-14)
Hutchison, David and Johnson, David eds.
ISBN : 978-1-5275-5447-4 | Publisher : Cambridge Scholars | Published : Newcastle

The Book in Africa: Critical Debates (2015)
Davis, Caroline and Johnson, David eds.
New Directions in Book History
ISBN : 9781137401618 | Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan | Published : Basingstoke

A Historical Companion to Postcolonial Literatures in English (2005)
Poddar, Prem and Johnson, David eds.
ISBN : 748618554 | Publisher : Edinburgh University Press | Published : Edinburgh, UK