Trance and transfiguration in rock art and literature

Richard Alan Northover is a professor of general literary theory and critical theory in the Department of Afrikaans and Theory of Literature at the University of South Africa. His PhD, obtained at the University of Pretoria in 2010, concerns the work of J.M. Coetzee in relation to animal ethics. In addition to several articles on the work of JM Coetzee, he has published on Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy and southern African rock art, both prehistoric and contemporary, placing his work in the fields of animal studies and ecocriticism. From 2016-2019, he chaired the Literature Association of South Africa (formerly SAVAL/SASGLS). He was appointed as editor of the Journal of Literary Studies from January 2020.

Wayne Stables is an associate professor of theory of literature at the University of South Africa. He is at work on two books. Miming Time is preoccupied with gestures as they play out in the interstices of language, literature and time. Radical Kafka looks to Kafka’s writing for resources for emancipatory politics. He is the author of a number of articles, ranging across literature, philosophy and visual art.

Francis Thackeray is a South African palaeontologist with a PhD in anthropology from Yale. He obtained degrees in archaeology, zoology and environmental studies from the University of Cape Town, and was based at the Ditsong National Museum of Natural History (former Transvaal Museum) in Pretoria for almost 20 years. Subsequently, in Johannesburg, he served as Director of the Institute for Human Evolution at the University of the Witwatersrand. He is currently associated with the Evolutionary Studies Institute at that University. His interest in Shakespeare began in childhood. With permission from the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust he was part of a small team which undertook chemical analysis of "tobacco" pipes from Stratford-upon-Avon. As an amateur actor he has performed in Hamlet and Macbeth. According to genealogical research undertaken by Wikitree, he is a first cousin of the Bard (several times removed) by virtue of being a direct descendant of Shakespeare's grandparents. 

David S. Whitley received his PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1982, where he also served as Chief Archaeologist at the UCLA Institute of Archeology from 1983 to 1987. He held a
postdoctoral research fellowship at the Rock Art Research Unit (now Institute), University of the Witwatersrand, from 1987 to 1989. He recently retired as Director at ASM Affiliates, Inc. in California. He received the Society for California Archaeology's Thomas King Award for Excellence in Cultural Research Management in 2001; a Choice Outstanding Academic Book Award in 2006 for his Introduction to Rock Art Research; and, in 2022, he received the Society for American Archaeology Award for Excellent in Archaeological Analysis.

Dan Wylie is Professor Emeritus in English at Rhodes University, Makhanda, South Africa. He has published two books on Shaka (Savage Delight and Myth of Iron: Shaka in History, both UKZN Press), two memoirs (Dead Leaves and Baobab School), two futuristic novellas, and several volumes of poetry. He founded the annual and ongoing Literature & Ecology Colloquium in 2004. Recent publications are Elephant and Crocodile (Reaktion), Raven Games: New and Collected Poems; Intimate Lightning: Sydney Clouts, poet (UNISA); Death & Compassion: The elephant in southern African literature (Wits UP); and Seven Southern African Poets and the Natural World (Atelier).