Dr. Weeraya Donsomsakulkij

Person
Priorities

Short Bio

Weeraya Donsomsakulkij is a lecturer of English Studies and Assistant Dean for quality assurance of Theodore Maria School of Arts, Assumption University of Thailand. She completed her MA degree in Intercultural Anglophone Studies from University of Bayreuth and her Ph.D in English Studies and Anglophone Literatures from BIGSAS, University of Bayreuth. Her research interests are on ecocritical and postcolonial readings in Anglophone literatures, particularly South African Literature, with a focus on posthumanism and the representations of environmental ethics and anthropocene.

Selected Publications

Donsomsakulkij, Weeraya. “World of Agency Revisited: Representation of Environmental Ethics for the Niger Delta in Kaine Agary’s Yellow-Yellow (2006)”. Arab World English Journal for Translation & Literary Studies 2.4 (2018): 214-220. Web. http://dx.doi.org/10.24093/awejtls/vol2no4.17
Donsomsakulkij, Weeraya. “Whiteness and Future Environmentalism in J.M Coetzee’s Disgrace (1999)”. JALA 11.1 (2017): 70-82. Web. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21674736.2017.1335947?journalCode=rala 20
Donsomsakulkij, Weeraya. “Spirited Away: Negotiation between Capitalism and Reminiscent Environmental Ethics.” Resilience: A Journal of Environmental Humanities 2.3 (2015): 147- 151. Web. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5250/resilience.2.3.0147?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
Donsomsakulkij, Weeraya. “An Experience of Sacred Space in Zakes Mda’s The Whale Caller (2005): Imagining Cross-species Sacred Space and Trans-species Ritual between Humans and Whales in South Africa”. BIGSASWorks! 15: Religion and Space (2015): 79-88. Web. https://epub.uni-bayreuth.de/2743/
Donsomsakulkij, Weeraya. “Wenn der Wal antwortet: Ein »kultureller« Dialog zwischen den Arten in Zakes Mdas Der Walrufer”. Trans. Sophie Forkel. Just Politics: Ökokritische Perspektiven im postkolonialen Raum. Eds. Lina F., Elisabeth N., Anna R. and Christoph S. Müster: Unrast Verlag, 2014. 181-195. Print.

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Project Description

Project Title: The Materiality of Narration: Reading Agency of Things in Selected African Short Stories in English

This research project relies on postcolonial-posthumanist reading, aiming at analyzing selected African narratives in terms of the power of agency and the representations of environmental knowledge. Interactions between various sets of environmental materiality and constructions of environmental meanings as knowledge(s) about environment, and at the same time, the knowledge(s) of environment are at the fore. .

The following questions are pursued in this project:

1. How are power of agency and environmental knowledge(s) re/presented and thus produced, mediated and negotiated materially and discursively? Which categories, topoi and aesthetics are mobilized by environmentalist activists and campaigns when re/narrating agency and environment? How do our metaphors of the land influence the way we treat it?

2. How does human knowledge(s) give voice to, appropriate and/or silence non-human knowledge(s) about environment? How are agency and knowledge(s) beyond the human/animated identified/ evaded/ silenced/empowered?

3. Does the field of imagination and aesthetics open up unique approaches to re/presenting and re/producing environmental knowledge(s) and assessing non-human knowledge(s), agencies and visions?