Thembelani (Themba) Mbatha is Assistant Professor of African and African American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, where he teaches on the literary, cultural, and intellectual histories of postcolonial Africa and the African diaspora. He is also appointed as Assistant Professor (courtesy affiliation) in the English Department and is faculty affiliate with the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Equity.
Themba is currently working on his first monograph on the literary and discursive afterlives of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Located at the nexus of Black Studies, postcolonial criticism, and Memory Studies, this project revisits the apartheid archive – by way of erecting a dialogue between the TRC and contemporary literature and art – in order to reconceptualize rituals of witnessing and cartographies of racialized memory commensurate with the political questions of post-apartheid generations.
He received his Ph.D. in English and graduate certificate in African American Studies from Princeton University. His prior academic training took place at the Universities of the Witwatersrand and Cape Town, from which he holds degrees in English literary studies and Philosophy. Themba currently serves on WashU’s Center for the Humanities Executive Committee.