Dr. Bwesigye Bwa Mwesigire

Assistant Professor

Dr. Bwesigye Bwa Mwesigire (Bwa-Mwesigire is one name), PhD (he/him/his) is a transdisciplinary scholar, cultural and literary critic, trained attorney, creative writer, first-generation college graduate, co-founder and Director of the Center for African Cultural Excellence, and Assistant Professor of Global Africana Literatures and Cultures at the California State University, Dominguez Hills.

His scholarship pays attention to the imagination of freedom as a practice of abolition at home and in the diaspora. Broadly, his interests include critical race theory, popular culture, literature, cultural studies, digital studies, literary activism, law and literature, political economy, indigenous studies, African and African Diaspora Studies, among others. Bwesigye cultivated these interests while earning his LL.B. from Makerere University, Kampala, MSc in Security Studies from King's College, London and his M.A. and Ph.D. in English Language and Literatures from Cornell University as well as teaching at Makerere University, Uganda Christian University, Uganda Martyrs University, Cornell University and Emory University. He also has learnt from practice, through his work on the Writivism Literary Initiative, the Ubuntu Reading Group, the Arts Managers and Literary Activists (AMLA) Network, Nyanja Football Club, the Flash Theatre Project, among other projects and initiatives.

His work appears in the Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies journal, Research in African Literatures, Journal of the African Literature Association, The Journal of Leadership and Developing Societies, the AFLA Quarterly, Africa is a Country, Review of African Political Economy, This is Africa, African Arguments, Chimurenga Chronic, The Johannesburg Review of Books, Africa in Words, among others. Bwesigye has edited anthologies of creative writing, and photography and at least one special issue of an academic journal. Additionally, he is a member of the Pan-African Activist Solidarity Collective (PAASC) which curates the Pan-African Activist Sunday School (PASS) series of popular political education livestreams on contemporary political issues in Africa and her diaspora. He has also facilitated the Oñgwaga•ä' Native Writers Workshop in collaboration with the Berkeley Center for Cultural Humility.

He has earned the Cornell University NextGen Professors program fellowship (2022-2023), Cornell University Library Summer Digital Humanities Fellowship (2018), the African Leadership Centre Fellowship for African Scholars (2015 - 2017), the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation Young African Scholars Award (2015), and the Do School Theatre Fellowship (2013), among others.

Courses Taught

• Africana Literary Traditions (AFS 231)
• African Literature and Culture (AFS 331)
• Africana Art and Culture (AFS 334)
• Africana Studies Capstone Seminar (AFS 490)

Speciality Areas

• 20th & 21st Century Literatures
• African (Indigenous) Studies
• African (Diaspora) Studies
• Postcolonial Studies
• Critical Race Theory
• Law and Literature
• Digital Humanities
• Political Economy
• Literary Cultures
• Literary Activism
• Cultural Studies
• Popular Culture
• Creative Writing
• Afro-Feminism
• Black Studies

Ongoing Research Work 

• Monograph - Afro-Nationalism: The Transcontinental Poetics of Newly Black Fiction focuses on the ways in which immigrant African short stories and novels published after 2000 contribute to a Black Radical Tradition, through a practice of African indigenous nationalism and African diaspora abolition nationalism.
• Minigraph - The Diaspora and Digital Turn of the Next Generation in African Literary Activism historicizes the post-2012 generation of curators of online African literary platforms by connecting their work to mid-twentieth century Black British / Afro-Caribbean literary movements to develop a political economy of literary activism.
• Special Issue - “Beyond Literary Activism: Diaspora, Digital, Embodied, Sound and Visual Dimensions” brings together early career African scholars who work in literary and cultural studies to expand the concept of literary activism as the establishment of independent publishing and cultural production infrastructure beyond the text, and the continent, to include the analysis of music and fine art as a tool for political advocacy, the establishment of a free African cinema culture, the erotic dimensions of book fairs, on the backdrop of the diaspora and digital turn in literary activism.
• Forum Special Issue, on “The Digital Feminist Solidarity of the #FreeStellaNyanzi, #PushforStellaNyanzi and allied hashtag campaigns.”

Select Forthcoming Articles and Book chapters

• An Afro-Nationalist History of Ghanaian Women Writing: From the Colonial Beyond the Neoliberal
• Between African and Black: Literary Activism Beyond Transition Magazine’s Middle Passage
• Writing Songs for Nawal: Education as a Practice of Community Building
• The Political Economy of Literary Activism: Pandemic-era African Immigrant Digital Magazines’ Practice of the Black Radical Tradition
• The Abolitionist Poetics of Okot p’Bitek
• Through Maya Angelou’s Eyes: From Black Internationalism to African and American Nationalisms
• The Word as Sylvia Tamale’s Critical Race Praxis: Activist Pedagogy in Uganda

Select Recent Publications (2016 -)

• “Jimmy Spire Ssentongo’s Malaki Shoes”, Afterword to the second edition of Quarantined: My Ordeal in Uganda’s Covid-19 Isolation Centers by Jimmy Spire Ssentongo, Makerere University Press, Kampala (2024). 
• With Ainomugisha M. “#WeAreRemovingADictator: The 2021 Uganda Election Crisis and the Possibilities and Limits of Youth, Diaspora and Digital Activism”, in Handbook on Youth Activism, edited by Jerusha Conner, (2024) Edward Elgar Publishing.
• Book Review: Singing the Law: Oral Jurisprudence and the Crisis of Colonial Modernity in East African Literature by Peter Leman, Journal of the African Literature Association, (2023) Vol 17, No. 1, pp. 229 - 231.
• Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies, Vol. 7, Issues Nos. 1-2, “Literary Activism in 21st Century Africa.” Co-edited with Ruth Bush, Kate Wallis and Madhu Krishnan.
• “What is Literary Activism? (Or Who keeps the housekeepers’ house?)”, Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies, (2021) Vol. 7, Nos. 1-2, pp. 10 - 22.
• With Madhu Krishnan “Creative Writing as Literary Activism: Decolonial Perspectives on the Writing Workshop”, Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies, (2020) Vol. 7, Nos. 1-2, pp. 97 - 115.
• Book Review Forum: Written Under the Skin: Blood and Intergenerational Memory in South Africa by Carli Coetzee, “The Bloods of Literary Activists”, Journal of the African Literature Association, (2020) Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 146 - 148.
• With E.M Mirembe “Introduction”, in No Roses from my Mouth: Poems from Prison, Ubuntu Reading Group, Kampala, (2020) pp. vii - xiii.
• “Beyond the Afropolitan Postnation: The Contemporaneity of Jennifer Makumbi's Kintu”, Research in African Literatures, (2018) Vol. 49, No. 1, pp. 103 – 116.
• With Madhu Krishnan (2018) “Introduction”, in Odokonyero: A Writivism Anthology of Short Fiction by Emerging Ugandan Writers, Black Letter Media, Yeoville, p. ix.
• "Righting land wrongs with the pen: The leadership of Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Ken Saro Wiwa", The Journal of Leadership and Developing Societies, (2016) Vol 1, No. 1, pp. 29 - 57.

Select Recent Popular Writing (2016 -)

• Faith in native consciousness,” Africa is a Country, February 22, 2023.
• “What is the role of radical intellectuals in Uganda?” Review of African Political Economy Online blog, February 13, 2023.
• With Kuukuwa Manful, “A poem about the president gets you jailed in Uganda,” Africa is a Country, June 16, 2019.
• “Why, exactly, are Ugandans so proud of Daniel Kaluuya’s Oscar nomination?” Quartz, February 6, 2018.
• “What happened to Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Makerere University?” This is Africa, March 17, 2017.
• “The Strong Breed: The Rise and Fall of Africa’s great literary leaders,” African Arguments, February 13, 2017.

Select Recent Presentations (2016 -)

Recent Public Speaking and Media Appearances (2016 -)