Pan-African Studies | Tavengwa Gwekwerere

Dr. Tavengwa Gwekwerere is Associate Professor of African and Afro-Diasporic Literatures and Cultures in the Department of Pan-African Studies at California State University, Los Angeles. He received his PhD in African Literature and Critical Theory from the University of South Africa, and his MA and BA from the University of Zimbabwe. His teaching and research interests are situated at the intersection of race, power, memory, and nationalism in Africa and the African Diaspora. In his classroom practice, Dr. Gwekwerere centers African and Afro-Diasporic cultural media, politics, and history to illuminate and problematize how African and Afro-Diasporic communities remember the past, engage the present, and imagine the future. The touchstone of his classroom culture is critical, independent, and courageous thinking. 

Dr. Gwekwerere’s scholarly corpus draws heavily from Afrocentric, Afrotriumphalist, and Pan-Africanist intellectual traditions. Through several book chapters in edited volumes and articles in peer-reviewed journals, including Journal of Black Studies, African Identities, South African Journal of African Languages, Africology: Journal of Pan-African Studies, Western Journal of Black Studies and Journal of Asian and African Studies, among others, Dr. Gwekwerere’s scholarship addresses how sovereign African and Afro-Diasporic identities and alternative worlds are imagined, rehearsed, and contested in African and Afro-Diasporic cultural media. He has twice been honored by the African Languages Association of Southern Africa for his outstanding articles published in the South African Journal of African Languages. 

Prior to joining the Department of Pan-African Studies at California State University, Los Angeles, Dr. Gwekwerere was a Senior Lecturer in the Department of African Languages and Literature at the University of Zimbabwe and a Research Fellow in the Department of African Languages at the University of South Africa. He also held visiting professorships in the Department of African and African American Studies at the University of Oklahoma, the School of Languages and Literatures at the University of Cape Town, and the Department of African Languages and Literatures at Great Zimbabwe University.