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This thesis examines the literary production of three publishers based on the African continent established shortly after the turn of the millennium - Nairobi-based Kwani Trust, Lagos-based Kachifo and Abuja-based Cassava Republic Press. It asks how these three contemporary and connected literary institutions, and the writers associated with them, have opened up new spaces and forms for the production of cultural memory and for African literature in English. The first part of the study offers close readings of texts by writers including Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Sefi Atta, Helon Habila, Parselelo Kantai and Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, foregrounding the different ways in which these give literary form to memory and geography. I highlight a particular preoccupation with historiography in the editorial agenda of Kwani Trust. Reading contemporary novels published by Farafina and Cassava Republic Press through the work of Achille Mbembe, I characterize these as opening up new forms for imagining space. The argument that stretches across the thesis is that Kwani Trust, Kachifo's Farafina imprint and Cassava Republic Press have opened up new spaces and forms for cultural production by making memory, geography and literature material. Drawing on in-depth interviews, the second part of the study analyses the digital and physical exchanges, as well as the medium, through which these literary texts have been created, produced and validated. I argue for a particular connection between the dynamics of materiality as relating to physical form, and materiality as relating to cultural value. With chapters focused on the medium of print, and on the relationships revealed by particular literary events located in Nairobi and Lagos, I demonstrate the significance of these publishing companies in establishing the foundations of a pan-African literary network which has nurtured and brought cultural value to some of the leading voices in twenty-first century African writing in English published from London or New York, as well as inspiring and validating new literary institutions on the continent. Through this, I make a case that literary studies requires new models that better account for the global cultural flows and multiple sites of value that this study makes visible, redefining Casanova's Eurocentric conception of ‘world literary space'.

As part of a larger project to understand mid ocean ridge systematics and the accretion of oceanic crust, this study will focus on the Galapagos Spreading Center (GSC) and the interaction of the Galapagos plume with mid-ocean ridge processes. Glasses data from along the GSC were used to calculate pressures of partial crystallization using the Kelley and Barton method (2008) that can then be related to depths within the Earth. Depending on the range of pressures of crystallization, models of crustal accretion can then be interpreted from the results. Pressure results can also be related to chemistry along the ridge to further understand how pressures can relate to the Galapagos plume, transform faulting and propagating tips. Chemistry shows the Galapagos plume to affect the GSC from 95.5°W and 86.5°W. Calculated pressures range from east to west along the GSC. The western GSC yields an average pressure of 160 MPa which correlates to 5.6 km into the crust. The central GSC, including plume affected ridge, yields an average pressure of 260 MPa. This correlates to a depth of 9.1 km in the crust. The western GSC yields an average pressure of 172 MPa which correlates to 6 km within the crust. Overall, these average pressures are within range of a 10 km thick crust. However, individual glass results yield a maximum pressure of ~820 MPa. This pressure would correspond to depths that extend into the mantle. Higher pressure results can be explained by crustal-magma processes such as assimilation or magmatic processes such as mixing. K2O vs. P2O5 (wt. %) diagrams suggest that there are mantle heterogeneities along the ridge. This paper will discuss and interpret the results of these high pressures and correlate high-pressure results to chemistry as well as geologic location.