Education
PhD. University of Birmingham, U.K. (1993-1996)
Centre for Cultural Studies.
Masters degree
University of York, UK (1987-1988 )
Undergraduate degree (1981-1984)
University of the Western Cape,
Cape Town, South Africa
Honours degree, part-time (1985-1986)
University of the Western Cape,
Cape Town, South Africa.
Main Professional Achievements
• In 1987, at the age of 24, I was nominated for the “Woman of the Year” award hosted in Johannesburg, South Africa, for my work in the area of violence against women and for starting, with four women, the first Black feminist organization in Cape Town, South Africa, Women Against Repression [W.A.R].
• Approached to work as researcher and writer for the Canadian Panel on Violence against Women. This was a 10 Million dollar initiative that brought awareness to the general public, police services and the legislature, on issues faced by women across Canada. I was hired as a researcher and writer for the division on Women of Colour.
• Recipient of major literary award, “The Journey Prize: Best Short Fiction in Canada, 1992.” This award along with $10, 000 was presented to me at the start of the International Authors Festival in Toronto on October 14th, 1992. McClelland and Stewart awards this annually and holds a “blind jury” to determine the winner of this prestigious award.
• My life history, work and contribution to the anti-apartheid struggle and feminist struggle in South Africa, is currently being studied toward inclusion of the High School curriculum, under the subject heading: Canadian history.
• Rosa’s District Six made the weekly bestseller list in Canada, March 2006.
• My fiction book, Rosa’s District Six, was chosen as a HOMEBRU title in South Africa. The HOMEBRU competition selects 25 books out of all submissions in the country, which includes poetry, fiction, biography, social science and history. I attended the launch on April 21st and have since conducted several television and radio interviews, including the BBC in Paris, on the subject of the book as well as on the actual writing of the book, its style, and the main character in the book’s preoccupation with writing. Several newspapers have interviewed me in connection with the book, not only because of the content and title, which makes reference to District Six, an area from which a quarter of a million people were forcibly removed, but also because the writing style is considered unique.
• Encré Noire/Black Ink
In February 2006, the Governor General of Canada, who acts as the representative of Canada to the Queen of England, added my name to the list of twenty four Canadian writers of African descent, to have their work exhibited around the country, in major and small cities, for one full year. This was an inaugural programme, and speaks specifically to the fact that for the first time in Canadian history, the Governor General is a Black woman, of Haitian heritage.
• The Writing Circle was chosen as one of the TOP TEN novels in South Africa. The screen script is currently under review with a Canadian film company.
• The Writing Circle was nominated for African Studies award.
• Writer and Director for Theatre of the Oppressed Festival in Palestine, April 2009
Work Experience
I have worked as a professor, researcher, writer, consultant to women’s organisations, social justice organisations and Arts organisations, a public speaker and conference keynote speaker nationally and internationally, ran a private practice doing psychoanalysis and a writer and director for theatre, over the past twenty years.
i. Groote Schuur Hospital,
Cape Town, South Africa (Emergency Unit and Gynaecology 1985-1987)
ii. Colegio Jefferson, Cali, Colombia,
South America (1989)
Teaching English Literature.
iii. Psychoanalysis Private Practice (Toronto, Canada. 1989-1991)
Writer and Editor for various literary magazines
Consultant to Arts Organizations and Women’s Organizations.
iv. University of Ottawa, Canada. (1991-1994)
Appointed to Women’s Studies in 1991
Appointed to Adult Education in 1992; taught Creative Writing
Continued part-time teaching while I was doing my PhD during the summer semesters.
v. Health Canada, 1992
Canadian Panel on Violence Against Women.
10 Million Dollar Initiative.
Researcher and Writer.
vi. Universidad del Valle (Research Associate 1996-1997)
Worked with Centro del Genero (Centre for Gender Studies)
Funded Research.
vii. Mills College (Visiting Professor, 1998 )
Hosted by the Women’s Leadership Institute
Lectures and Seminars within an interdisciplinary setting.
Philosophy, English Literature, Cultural Studies.
viii. University of Guelph, Canada (1999-2001)
Appointment to English in 1999
Cross-appointed to Sociology; supervision in Fine Art.
ix. Director, The Biko Institute,Guelph, Canada (2001-2006)
Small Educational Institute.
x. The University of the Western Cape, Cape Town
South Africa. Department of English (2007)
xi. Writer and Consultant (2008)
xii. Writer and Director–Theatre of the Oppressed
Canada, South Africa, Palestine (2009)
xiii. University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
PUBLICATIONS
FICTION
Talk About It!
Williams-Wallace Publishers
Stratford, Ontario, Canada: 1990
Rosa’s District Six
• TSAR publications: Toronto, Canada. December 2004 (A collection of short stories)
• New Africa Books, David Philip Publishers, Cape Town, South Africa, 2006. This collection also includes, “No Rosa, No District Six,” which won: The Journey Prize: Best Short Fiction in Canada, 1992.”
The Writing Circle
• TSAR Publications, Toronto, Canada. November 2007.
• Shuter Publishers, South Africa. May 2008.
Set in Cape Town. A group of five women gather together every Friday night to discuss their experiences of writing memory, writing the body–they call this gathering the Writing Circle. A woman is hijacked and raped in her car; her attacker is killed and the women in the circle have to deal with her rape and his death.
SCREEN SCRIPT
The Writing Circle. Currently under review.
ESSAYS, ARTICLES AND SHORT FICTION.
“Bollywood and the Politics of identity or How Bollywood influenced Identity Politics in Apartheid South Africa,” in Herizons: Women’s News and Feminist Views, Summer 2009: Canada.
“Who do you think you are?” A series of six interconnect skits on the history of oppression in South Africa. Writer and Director. Performed at the Second International Theatre of the Oppressed Festival in Palestine, April, 2009.
Review of Child of Dandelions, by Shenaaz Nanji in Herizons: Women’s News and Feminist Views, Spring 2009: Canada.
“Rebels with a Cause : Giving Voice to Dissidence by Focusing on the Mind. The rise of the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa,” in Dissidence et Identite Plurielles, Universitaire de Nancy: Paris, 2008.
“Violent legacy leave women in it’s wake,” an interview with Irene D’Souza, in Herizons: Women’s News and Feminist Views, Winter 2008: Canada.
Arts & Culture, Arts profile in Herizons: Women’s News and Feminist Views, Winter 2007: Canada. “When Black Consciousness Meets White Consciousness,” interview with Rozena Maart by Roewan Crowe, (pp44-46).
“When Black Consciousness Meets White Consciousness in Feminist Organisations.” L’objet identité: épistémologie et transversalité The Object Identity; Cross-disciplinary Perspectives and Epistemology. Edited by Jean-Paul Rocchi (Université Paris 7-Denis Diderot) (Fall 2006)
Hinterland, nachbarn 02/06
No Rosa, No District Six
Erzablung
Von Rozena Maart (pp22-31)
Germany: Released November 2006
Hinterland, nachbarn 02/06Menschen, nicht Opfer
Die Schriftstellerin Rozena Maart zu ihrem Buch“
Rosa’s District Six” (pp32-33)
Germany: Released November 2006.
The White Screen, The White Canvas: The Colour of Authority.
Awomandla Publishers Guelph, 2004
(Folded four-sided pamphlet with text and 8 photographs). A Postcard series
“The Theatre of Racism,” in Strangers in the Mirror: In and Out of the Mainstream of Culture in Canada. [Media Arts publication; taught within colleges and universities]. TSAR publishers,
Toronto: December 2004.
“Chasing the Dragon,” in Toronto,” Canada. Rozena Maart in dialogue with video-maker Karen Kew in Strangers in the Mirror: In and Out of the Mainstream of Culture in Canada. [Media Arts publication; taught within colleges and universities].TSAR publishers,Toronto: December 2004.
“Rozena Maart speaks out on Black Consciousness,” in The Ontarian: February 2004.
Guelph, Ontario, Canada.
“The White Screen, The White Canvas.” The Ontarian: January 2004. Guelph, Ontario.
“When there is no limit to Spirit,” in Fuse Magazine: Canada’s Magazine on Culture and Society: Toronto, Canada, Spring 2000. (Review of the work of 12 Visual and Performance artists).
“Womanation,” from Talk About It! Reprinted in Border Lines Contemporary Poems in English. Edited by J.A. Wainwright, Copp Clark Longman Ltd., Canada.
“Portrait of the Colonized in Bhaji on the Beach, ” in Fuse Magazine: Canada’s Magazine on Culture and Society: Toronto, Canada. Summer 1994. (Film Criticism).
“Language and Consciousness,” in Fireweed: A Feminist Journal, No.39:Toronto, Canada. Summer 1994.
“Cultural Appropriation: Historicizing Individuality, Consciousness and Actions,” in Fuse Magazine: Canada’s Magazine on Culture and Society: Toronto, Canada. Summer, Double-Issue: 1993.
“Pain and Glory”: Reviews of the poetry of Claire Harris’ Drawing Down a Daughter and Di Brandt’s Mother, Not Mother, in Books in Canada, May 1993.
“Speaking Up, Speaking Out,” in A Reader in Feminist Ethics (Ed) Debra Shogan, Canadian Scholars Press: Toronto, 1992. Reprinted 1993.
“Consciousness, Knowledge and Morality: The Absence of the Knowledge of White Consciousness in Contemporary Feminist Theory,” in A Reader in Feminist Ethics (Ed) Debra Shogan, Canadian Scholars Press: Toronto, September 1992; Reprinted 1993, 1995, 1997.
“No Rosa, No District Six” in The Journey Prize Anthology 4: Best Short Fiction in Canada, McClelland and Stewart: Toronto, Canada. 1992
“An Immaculate Conception” in Voices: Canadian Writers of African Descent, June 1992, HarperCollins: Toronto, Canada.
“The Politics of Denouncement: Clarence Thomas As Supreme Court Judge,” in Fuse Magazine: Canada’s Magazine on Culture and Society: Vol. 15 No. 4: Spring 1992.
“Speaking Up, Speaking Out”, excerpt from poetry-and-essay collection in Tigerlilly Literary Journal:Toronto, Canada. Winter 1992.
“No Rosa, No District Six”, a short story, in Fireweed: Feminist Journal.Toronto, Canada. Spring 1991.
“African Oral Power: In Defiance of the Colonialism of the Written Word,” Fuse Magazine: Canada’s Magazine on Culture and Society: Spring 1991.
“Feminism in the 1990s” in Moving Forward Conference: Speeches and Proceedings Fall, 1990. This was initially a keynote address delivered at the Moving Forward Conference held at Trent University, which was modified for publication.
“Resistance from the Tongue” (A review of Marlene Nourbese Philip’s book, She Tries her Tongue: Her Silence Softly Breaks).Fuse Magazine: Canada’s Magazine on Culture and Society: Summer, 1990.
“Review of bell hook’s books” in Abeng, Sistervision Publishers: February 1990. Reprinted in Resources for Feminist Research, University of Toronto Press: Summer, 1990.
“Threading together past, present and future” in The Gargoyle: Black History Month Special Issue, Toronto: February 1990.
“Black, African Feminism needs to forge an agenda” in The Varsity,Toronto: February, 1990.
“Feminist Pavement Politics,” in Lives of Courage, Women for a New South Africa. Edited by Diana Russell, Basic Books, California, September 1989. The book covers the lives of twenty-four South African women. As the youngest woman (apart from Johnny Issel’s daughter) interviewed in the book my chapter constitutes one of twenty-four.
MA Thesis:
“A Feminist Agenda for Anti-apartheid and Anti-Capitalist Politics in South Africa.” University of York, UK (1988).
Phd Thesis:
“The Politics of Consciousness: The Consciousness of Politics. When Black Consciousness Meets White Consciousness.”
PAPERS AND PRESENTATIONS
(Too many to list) I have given many papers and presentations at conferences and symposiums in the UK, Canada and the US (mainly) for the past 20 years.
References
Prof. Di Brandt
Chair, Creative Writing
Brandon University
brandtd@brandonu.ca
Prof. Frans Schryer
Sociology & Anthropology
University of Guelph
fschryer@uoguelph.ca
Prof. Richard Johnson
Former Director of Cultural Studies, CCCS, Univ. of Birmingham & Chair, dept of English and Media Studies, University of Nottingham, Trent. Richard.johnson6@ntlworld.com
Prof. Angela Miles
Chair: Women’s Studies, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
University of Toronto
amiles@oise.utoronto.ca
Dr. Fiona Green
Chair, Women’s Studies
University of Winnipeg
f.green@uwinnipeg.ca
Prof. Michael Keefer
Professor of English
University of Guelph
mkeefer@uoguelph.ca
