Highlighting Publications from 2025: Fresh Ecocritical Voices in African Literatures and Cultures

Highlighting Publications from 2025: Fresh Ecocritical Voices in African Literatures and Cultures.

Co-edited by Chinonye C. Ekwueme-Ugwu, Joyce Onoromhenre Agofure, and Nsah Mala. Published 13 October 2025 by Spears Books.

Continuing our series highlighting publications from 2025, we focus on a volume that brings African environmental humanities to the forefront of global discourse. This edited collection explores how cultural production serves as a vital tool for navigating the complexities of the Anthropocene from the perspective of the Global South.

Fresh Ecocritical Voices in African Literatures and Cultures is an interdisciplinary effort that bridges the gap between literary analysis and ecological activism. Co-edited by Chinonye C. Ekwueme-Ugwu, Joyce Onoromhenre Agofure, and Nsah Mala, who also serves as a Hub Coordinator for the UNESCO-MOST BRIDGES Coalition Hub at the University of Cologne, this work exemplifies the coalition's mission to integrate humanities-led insights into sustainability science.

An Intersectional Landscape

This volume brings together fresh voices, both emerging and established, on the ecocritical landscape within African literatures and cultures. In the era of the Anthropocene, the editors and contributors demonstrate how African cultural products address climate and ecological concerns, including:

Activism and Advocacy: Examining the role of the creative writer in environmental resistance.

Conservation: Insights into animal and plant preservation through a cultural lens.

Intersectionality: How environmental challenges are intricately linked to questions of identity, space, justice, and indigenous knowledge systems.

Socio-Political Dimensions: Addressing food security, disasters, and social injustice as inseparable from ecological health.

Transcending Boundaries

The volume offers critical and comparative analysis that transcend the boundaries of languages (e.g., English and French), places (e.g., countries, continents, and geographies), and textual genres. The scope of the research is notably broad, encompassing:

Traditional and Modern Media: From newspapers and interviews to archaeology and orature.

Literary Forms: Prose, poetry, drama, theatre, and children’s literature.

Methodological Innovation: While espousing classical textual analysis and beginning to gesture towards empirical experimentation, the volume exemplifies ongoing decolonial and postcolonial approaches in environmental humanities.

By foregrounding these diverse perspectives, the publication sets a new benchmark for understanding the complex relationships between human and more-than-human worlds, moving beyond Western-centric frameworks to centre African agency and wisdom.

Find the volume here: Kindle | Google Books | Spears Books

ISBN-13: 9781957296647 (Paperback) | 9781957296654 (eBook)