Tesfaye Woubshet Ayele PhD student

My research is focused largely on African literature and on the ways literary texts connect with politics, society, and history. More recently, after having worked as a teacher for several years, I have developed a strong interest in pedagogy. My doctoral project explores how education is portrayed in the early novels of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Tsitsi Dangarembga. The portrayal of education in these highly prized works of fiction, I argue, is not only concerned with showing how education is tied to the realities of power -- especially colonial power -- as has been commonly argued. While acknowledging and developing this line of argument, I explore how these novels portray education as part of a cultural and political project of resistance, decolonization, and national liberation. This important aspect of these novels' portrayal of education has not been systematically explored nor has it been theorized, a gap in our knowledge that I wish to remedy in my doctoral thesis, as indicated by its preliminary title, Pedagogy of National Liberation. 

I also have a strong interest in Amharic literary studies. I have contributed to this field of study in the past and I hope to continue doing so in the future.