School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics
Dr Ret’sepile Makamane
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Key information
Key information
- Roles
- School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow
- Qualifications
- BA Theatre and Philosophy (National University of Lesotho), MA Development Studies and Gender (University of Leeds), MA Creative Writing (University of East Anglia), PhD (SOAS)
- Email address
- rm68@soas.ac.uk
Biography
Dr Ret’sepile Makamane is Lecturer in African Studies in the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics. Her interdisciplinary research brings together comparative, orality, classics and African studies and focuses on decolonising the study of literatures from the Global South, particularly Africa and the Caribbean.
Ret’sepile currently leads the project; EpicAfrica: Reimagining Southern Epistemologies through African Epics, funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) under the Future Leaders Fellowship scheme. The project centres African epics, and looks at how epics shape intellectual histories across the continent, the African diaspora and beyond. This intra/interdisciplinary and comparative research will create a platform of discussion and the basis for intellectual intervention and praxis to advance and expand cultural-literary discourse on epic.
The project straddles performance, music, linguistics, translation, philosophical/historical and heritage/archive studies. It aims to develop wider theoretical frameworks and methodological innovation for deeper engagement with African epics.
Her publications include Listening to Thomas Mofolo and Sesotho Orature - A Decolonial Approach to the African Novel and Comparative Literature, Legenda Cambridge (2026).
Key publications
Books
- A Decolonial Approach to African Orature: Listening to Thomas Mofolo (Forthcoming: Legenda Oxford: Studies in Comparative Literature Studies, 2025).
Book Chapters
- “Metamorphosis” (Forthcoming: In Translationality, Oxford University Press, 2025).
Short Stories
- “Why Tlatlametsi Escapes to Paradise”, in One World Anthology of Stories, Oxford: New Internationalist, 2016.
- “Disco,” in We shall sometime come to someplace, Stuttgart: Akademie Schloss Solitude, 2014.
- “Monrovia Scripture”, in AGNI 73, Boston: Agni, 2011.
- “Sesotho Speakers,” in African Writing 11, Manchester: African Writing, 2011.
- “Damien’s Shoes”, in Botsotso, Johannesburg: Botsotso Literary Magazine, 2010.
- “Letter of Apology”, in Anthology of African Stories, Nairobi: Oxford University Press, 2007.
- “Borrowed Pain”, in Itch, Cape Town: Itch Magazine, 2005.
