Research Areas

African Poetry,Graphic Novels,Masculinity Studies,Malawian Literature,Postcolonial Literature,Disability Studies,

Profile

Ken Junior Lipenga holds an MA in Literature from the University of Malawi and a Ph.D. in Literature from Stellenbosch University, South Africa. He is currently a Professor of English Literature at the University of Malawi. His research interests include disability studies and postcolonial literature. He has published articles in several journals, including the African Journal of Disability, The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship, and the Journal of African Cultural Studies.

Publications

• Journal Article
  Lipenga, Ken Junior, and Asante Lucy Mtenje, "Black Women and Self-Care: A Black Feminist Reading of Upile Chisala’s Poetry", Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 42: 2 (2023), 343-360. (2023)
  https://muse.jhu.edu/article/913029?casa_token=6gvOaEQBu8sAAAAA:NrT5MjUk9aT6PZT7h76LHhke76p-PWNKTz4l-Px1cLIL7sNu5XiaZp8fvz3vsqS-adGnbPQS

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• Book
  Rap Music and the Youth in Malawi: Reppin' the Flames, Palgrave Macmillan, 2023 (2023)
  https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-15251-1

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• Journal Article
  Lipenga, Ken Junior. "'Maybe we carry our mothers' traumas in our bones': Exploring the paradox of matrophobia in Upile Chisala's poetry", Women's Studies: An inter-disciplinary journal 51: 5 (2022), 560-574. (2022)
  

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• Journal Article
  Lipenga, Ken Junior, “The Prophet in Music: Lyrical representations of the Shepherd Bushiri discourse”, Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies 7: 3 (2021), 189-203 (2021)
  https://doi.org/10.1080/23277408.2021.1927939

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• Journal Article
  Lipenga, Ken Junior, “The Madando Rhetoric: Musical Critiques of Electoral Management in Malawi”, Journal of Southern African Studies (2021) (2021)
  https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2021.1987829

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• Journal Article
  Lipenga, Ken Junior, “Imagining the Malawian urban space in Lawrence Kadzitche’s Katakwe Kutauni”, Southern African Journal of African Languages. (2021)
  https://doi.org/10.1080/02572117.2022.2094080

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• Journal Article
  Lipenga, Ken Junior, and Tiwonge Katemecha, “Striking Bold Strokes: Albinism and Stigma in Malawian Spoken Word Poetry”, Imbizo 12: 2 (2021) (2021)
  https://doi.org/10.25159/2663-6565/9330

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• Book Chapters
  Lipenga, Ken Junior, “Bird Box and the Imperative of Sight,” Brandon R. Grafius and Gregory Stevenson (eds), Seeing the Apocalypse: Essays on Bird Box, Lehigh University Press, 2021, 15-30. (2021)
  https://lupress.cas.lehigh.edu/content/seeing-apocalypse-essays-bird-box

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• Book Chapters
  Lipenga, Ken Junior, “An Afriethical Approach to Malawi’s Online Journalism”, in Grivas Kayange and Charles Verharen (eds.), Ethics in Malawi, The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 2021. (2021)
  https://philpapers.org/rec/KAYEIM

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• Book Chapters
  Lipenga, Ken Junior, “The people’s joker: The popularity of Mr Jokes’ stand-up comedy in Malawi”, in Izuu Nwankwo (ed.), Stand-up Comedy in Africa: Humour in Popular Languages and Media, Hannover: ibidem-Verlag, (forthcoming, 2021), https://cup.columbia.edu/book/stand-up-comedy-in-africa/9783838216089 (2021)
  https://books.google.com/books/about/Stand_up_Comedy_in_Africa.html?id=6mNlEAAAQBAJ

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• Book Chapters
  Lipenga, Ken Junior, “‘We gon be alright: the musical response to the killing of people with albinism in Malawi”, in Charlotte Baker and Elvis Imafidon (eds.), Cultural Representations of Albinism in Africa: Narratives of Change, Oxford: Peter Lang, (forthcoming 2021) (2021)
  https://www.peterlang.com/document/1293347

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• Journal Article
  Lipenga, Ken Junior, “Reading Precarity, Disability and Narrative Agency in Helon Habila’s Waiting for an Angel and Measuring Time”, Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa 32: 2 (2020) (2020)
  https://doi.org/10.1080/1013929X.2020.1795351

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• Journal Article
  Lipenga, Ken Junior, “Lake lore: a study of lacustrine artistic representations in the Malawian imaginary”, Journal of the African Literature Association (2020) (2020)
  https://doi.org/10.1080/21674736.2020.1752000

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• Journal Article
  Lipenga, Ken Junior, “Youth, alcohol and the forging of community in Malawian hip-hop music”, Nordic Journal of African Studies 29: 3 (2020), 15 pages (2020)
  https://www.njas.fi/njas/article/view/528/393

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• Journal Article
  Lipenga, Ken Junior, “Lunatics and Intellectuals: Madness in Malawian Poetry”, Scrutiny 2: Issues in English Studies in Southern Africa (2019) (2019)
  https://doi.org/10.1080/18125441.2019.1647450

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• Journal Article
  Lipenga, Ken Junior, “Poets and Prostitutes: Sexual Morality in Malawian Poetry”, Imbizo 10:1 (2019) (2019)
  https://doi.org/10.25159/2663-6565/5867

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• Journal Article
  Lipenga, Ken Junior, “Tales of Political Monuments in Malawi: Re-storying National History”, Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies, (2019) (2019)
  https://doi.org/10.1080/23277408.2019.1644837

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• Journal Article
  Lipenga, Ken Junior, “Intersections of Sex and Violence in Preacher”, International Journal of Comic Art, 20: 2 (2019), 478-492. (2019)
  http://ijoca.blogspot.com/2019/03/

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• Journal Article
  Lipenga, Ken Junior, “The New Normal: Enfreakment in Saga”, The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship, 9:1 (2019), p.2. (2019)
  http://doi.org/10.16995/cg.161

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• Journal Article
  Ngwira, Emmanuel and Ken Junior Lipenga, “A Country Laughing at Itself: Malawian Humour in the Digital Age,” English Studies in Africa, 61:2 (2018) (2018)
  https://doi.org/10.1080/00138398.2018.1540156

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• Journal Article
  Lipenga, Ken Junior and Emmanuel Ngwira, “‘Black on the inside’: albino subjectivity in the African novel”, Disability and the Global South, 5:2 (2018), 1472-1487. (2018)
  https://disabilityglobalsouth.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/dgs_05_02_071.pdf

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• Journal Article
  Lipenga, Ken Junior, “The (un)making of a man: fathers and sons in the African novel,” Journal of Humanities, 25:2 (2017), 26-44. (2017)
  https://www.ajol.info/index.php/jh/article/view/165525

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• Journal Article
  Lipenga, Ken Junior, “Watching the Witching World: the role of superstition in contemporary Malawian film”, Journal of Humanities, 25:1 (2017), 112-127. (2017)
  https://www.ajol.info/index.php/jh/article/view/160202

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• Journal Article
  Lipenga, Ken Junior, “Weaving a path from the past: Gender, disability and narrative enablement in Zulu Love Letter”, Agenda: Empowering women for gender equity, 29:2 (2015), 112-121 (2015)
  https://doi.org/10.1080/10130950.2015.1038097

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• Journal Article
  Lipenga, Ken Junior, “Voicing Marginality: disability in Leila Aboulela’s Lyrics Alley”, Journal of African Cultural Studies, (2015), pp. 1-15 (2015)
  https://doi.org/10.1080/13696815.2015.1113127

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• Journal Article
  Lipenga, Ken Junior, “Disability and masculinity in South African autosomatography”, African Journal of Disability, 3:1 (2014), 9 pages, doi: 10.4102/ajod.v3i1.85, (2014)
  10.4102/ajod.v3i1.85

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• Journal Article
  Lipenga, Ken Junior, “Sex Outlaws: Challenges to Homophobia in Stanley Kenani’s ‘Love on Trial’ and Monica Arac de Nyeko’s ‘Jambula Tree’”, Assuming Gender, 4:1 (2014), 41-71. (2014)
  https://ipics.cardiffuniversitypress.org/articles/10.18573/ipics.67

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