Avian Encounters: Bird/Human Relations : New Seminar Series, July-October 2026
You are warmly invited to participate in a new seminar series
Avian Encounters: Bird/Human Relations
Convened by Isabel Hofmeyr and Sarah Nuttall
In an age of extinction, partial adaption and survival, what would a better understanding of the lives of birds afford us – and perhaps them? Unlike humans, birds travel anywhere, sing in a manner no other animal can and hear sound at distances undetectable to us. They forge or disavow encounters with humans that suggest complex relationalities. How to bridge the bird/human divide, drawing on the strengths of the humanities? Birds have been overfreighted with human meaning: as messengers of the gods, harbingers of the seasons, symbols of captivity and freedom, portentous flocks – not to mention the perspectives of the hunter, the cook, the meat-eater, the pet-owner, the ornithologist, the farmer, the birder. Yet, are there more flight-enabled perspectives* that shift us away those above? What is the birdness of birds - and how are they seen to embody their own lives? What might a history of the grey parrot tell us – about parrots and about us? What do art works using bird acoustics reveal? How do birds redefine geographies of air, water and land? What can film and other media learn from avian perceptual worlds and modes of seeing and looking? How are bird migrations changing with climate change? This series approaches these and other avian-inflected questions with a particular interest in African and Indian-Ocean oriented archives and hemispheric media drawn from literature, science studies, climate sciences, migration studies, and visual and film studies.
*With thanks to Olga Petri and Michael Guida (Winged Worlds Common Spaces of Avian-Human Lives, 2023) for this phrase
The series will run on Mondays, 4-5pm SAST from late July to late October, 2026, on the WiSER ONLINE platform.
Monday 27 July Nancy Jacobs | The Global Grey Parrot: How a Charismatic African Animal Became an International Commodity
Monday 3 August William Kentridge | William Kentridge in Conversation with Isabel Hofmeyr and Sarah Nuttall
Monday 10 August (Public holiday)
Monday 17 August Vulindlela Nyoni | Bird-Brained: Diasporic and Migratory Subjectivities Through the Mind and Eyes of a Printmaker
Monday 24 August Mia Couto | Mia Couto in Conversation with Stefan Helgesson
Monday 31 August Madhumita Lahiri | Birds on Film: Synanthropic Species and the Globalised Indian Cinema
Monday 7 September (Wits term break)
Monday 14 September Philip Miller | Syrinx/larynx
Monday 21 September Ryan Bishop | Abstracting Flight: Datafication and Divination, or Birds and/as Media Technologies
Monday 28 September Tinashe Mushakavanhu | Excavating Birds
Monday 5 October Simon van Schalkwyk | Unpicking the Tarmac: The Weird, the Eerie, and Avian Anomalies in Zero Summer
Monday 12 October Chevonne Reynolds, Koi Pillay, Matt Noakes | Life on the Wing: Avian Migrations, Persecutions and the Challenges of Climate Change
Monday 19 October James Webb | There’s No Place Called Home: Hacking the Familiar
Monday 26 October Gabeba Baderoon, Yvette Christiansë | Leaving above the tempest/a book that flies on forever/the statute of the wind
Abstracts and Bios link
Please find Zoom link here