Aaron Bartels-Swindells

Professional Bio

Aaron Bartels-Swindells holds an M.A. (Hons) in English Literature from the University of Edinburgh, an M.Phil. in Criticism and Culture from the University of Cambridge, and a Ph.D. in English with a certificate in Africana Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. He specializes in global Anglophone literatures and global Black literatures, specifically those from Sub-Saharan Africa, with additional interests in postcolonial studies, theories of the novel, and critical and literary theory. His research has appeared in Representations, African Identities, and Post45: Contemporaries. 

Aaron's Ph.D. dissertation, entitled "Impossible Realisms: Genre and Apartheid, 1902-1973," closely reads literary texts by writers such as Sol Plaatje, Nadine Gordimer, and the short story writers of Drum magazine to offer a new understanding of the motive forces behind realist fiction in twentieth-century South Africa.

Aaron's research has been funded by the Mellon Foundation, the Fulbright Program, the U.S. Department of Education, the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Fox International Fellowship at Yale University.