Esthie Hugo

Writer, scholar, teacher.

I am a lecturer in English Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. My research interests include world-literature, genre studies, the environmental humanities, critical race theory, and social reproductive feminism. I have published on contemporary Gothic fiction, Caribbean women's poetry, food and feminism, as well as atmospheric pollution and racial violence in postcolonial African writing. I am currently working on my first academic monograph, provisionally entitled Intimate Invasions: Literature, Ecology and the New Feminist Gothic.

Select Publications

Books

In progress:

Intimate Invasions: Literature, Ecology and the New Feminist Gothic.

Articles

Forthcoming and in progress:

“Sugar and the Southern African Novel.”
(Co-authored with Michael Niblett, Chris Campbell, and Christine Okoth) “Introduction: Commodity Frontiers and World Literature,” Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies.
“Terrors of the House and Field: Saccharine Gothic and Caribbean Plantation Literatures,” Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies.

Published:

“A ‘Violence Just Below the Skin’: Atmospheric Terror and Racial Ecologies in Ben Okri’s “In the City of Red Dust,” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies for Literature and Environment, 29, no. 1 (2022). Winner of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) Graduate Student Paper Award.
“Looking forward, Looking Back: Animating Magic, Modernity and the African City-Future in Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon,” Social Dynamics, 43, no. 1 (2017): 46 – 58.

Chapters in Edited Collections

Forthcoming and in progress:

“Gothic and Labour: Metabolic, Reproductive, International,” in The Cambridge Companion to World Gothic Literature, eds. Rebekah Cumpsty and Rebecca Duncan (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2025).
“A World of Confinement and Compartments: Césaire, Fanon, and the Suffocating City,” in Ends of the Global City, eds. Rashmi Varma and Jini Kim Watson (New York: Palgrave, 2024).

Published:

“Tropical Gothic: Plantation Ecology, Commodity Frontiers, and the Aesthetics of Excess,” in The Edinburgh Companion to Globalgothic, ed. Rebecca Duncan (Edinburgh University Press, 2023).
(co-authored with Nora Castle) “‘Growgirls’ and Cultured Eggs: Food Futures and Feminism in SF from the Global South,” in Technologies of Feminist Speculative Fiction: Gender, Artificial Life, and the Politics of Reproduction, eds., Sherryl Vint and Sümeyra Buran (London: Springer, 2022).
“A Violence ‘Just Below the Skin’: Atmospheric Terror and Racial Ecologies from the African Anthropocene,” in Gothic and the Anthropocene: Dark Scenes from Damaged Earth, eds., Justin D. Edwards, Rune Graulund, Johan Höglund (University of Minnesota Press, 2022).
“Pain, Pleasure, and the World-Food-System: Plotting the Afterlife of the Plantation in the Poetry of Grace Nichols,” in Literary and Cultural Production, World-Ecology, and the Global Food System, eds., Chris Campbell, Michael Niblett, and Kerstin Oloff (London: Palgrave, 2021).

Teaching

Postgraduate Courses

Undergraduate Courses

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Contact:

esthie.hugo@wits.ac.za

Esthie Hugo

Select Publications

​

​

Books

​

In progress:

Intimate Invasions: Literature, Ecology and the New Feminist Gothic.

Articles

​

Forthcoming and in progress:

“Sugar and the Southern African Novel.”

(Co-authored with Michael Niblett, Chris Campbell, and Christine Okoth) “Introduction: Commodity Frontiers and World Literature,” Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies.

“Terrors of the House and Field: Saccharine Gothic and Caribbean Plantation Literatures,” Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies.

​

Published:

Chapters in Edited Collections

​

Forthcoming and in progress:

“Gothic and Labour: Metabolic, Reproductive, International,” in The Cambridge Companion to World Gothic Literature, eds. Rebekah Cumpsty and Rebecca Duncan (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2025).

“A World of Confinement and Compartments: Césaire, Fanon, and the Suffocating City,” in Ends of the Global City, eds. Rashmi Varma and Jini Kim Watson (New York: Palgrave, 2024).

​

Published:

“Tropical Gothic: Plantation Ecology, Commodity Frontiers, and the Aesthetics of Excess,” in The Edinburgh Companion to Globalgothic, ed. Rebecca Duncan (Edinburgh University Press, 2023).

(co-authored with Nora Castle) “‘Growgirls’ and Cultured Eggs: Food Futures and Feminism in SF from the Global South,” in Technologies of Feminist Speculative Fiction: Gender, Artificial Life, and the Politics of Reproduction, eds., Sherryl Vint and Sümeyra Buran (London: Springer, 2022).

“A Violence ‘Just Below the Skin’: Atmospheric Terror and Racial Ecologies from the African Anthropocene,” in Gothic and the Anthropocene: Dark Scenes from Damaged Earth, eds., Justin D. Edwards, Rune Graulund, Johan Höglund (University of Minnesota Press, 2022).

“Pain, Pleasure, and the World-Food-System: Plotting the Afterlife of the Plantation in the Poetry of Grace Nichols,” in Literary and Cultural Production, World-Ecology, and the Global Food System, eds., Chris Campbell, Michael Niblett, and Kerstin Oloff (London: Palgrave, 2021).

Teaching

Postgraduate Courses