Loren Kruger

Loren Kruger’s research includes several languages and locations around the globe.
1. Drama and performance in English, French, German and Spanish across Africa, the African diaspora, the Americas, and Europe.
2. Literature, performance, and visual culture in South Africa in Afrikaans and Zulu as well as English

Primary academic appointments are in English and Comparative Literature, but Prof Kruger is also affiliated with the committees on African Studies and on Theater and Performance Studies as well as the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture, the departments of Cinema and Media Studies, and Germanic Studies.
Kruger’s most recent book, Imagining the Edgy City, brings together interests in film and fiction, public art, architecture, and history with previous work on theatre and other performances in Johannesburg. The book shows how apparently new claims for Johannesburg as global city hide a long history of images of Johannesburg as the wonder city of Africa and the world, with comparisons both pertinent and impertinent with other cities from Chicago to Paris, Berlin to Bogotá, Sydney to São Paolo. Johannesburg has been called the “Chicago of South Africa” partly because of gangster culture in both places, but the Johannesburg skyline also owes a great deal to the influence of Chicago architects.