The WiSER Podcast | Bessie Head's Absorbent Literature by Anneke Rautenbach
In this week’s episode, Anneke Rautenbach discusses how, when the writer Bessie Head escaped apartheid South Africa and settled in the rural village of Serowe, Botswana, she remained haunted by the violence of her past. In her work on experimental development farms, alongside locals and foreign volunteers, she discovered not only a source of healing, but a subterranean moral philosophy.
Anneke Rautenbach spent time in residence at WiSER in 2022, participated in The WiSER Podcast group and travelled from there to Botswana to conduct archival research at the Bessie Head Papers in Serowe. She is currently a doctoral candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature at New York University, where she is completing a dissertation on the role of the public intellectual in southern Africa. The PhD focuses on flashpoint moments in recent history when language played a particularly dynamic role -- from anticolonial prophecy to nationalist sloganeering to the metaphors of the HIV/AIDS crisis.
The WiSER Podcast Team this year is convened by Sarah Nuttall, sound editing by Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh and designs by Bronwyn Kotzen.
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New Episode of #IndianOceanWorld Podcast @NewBooksNetwork: Pamila Gupta, "Portuguese Decolonization in the Indian Ocean World: History and Ethnography" @BloomsburyAcad. Tune in to learn about decolonization processes across Lusophone Africa and South Asia.
Sourced from Twitter user Ahmed Yaqoub
Today WISER releases Season One of The WISER Podcast Series. The series launched in April of this year, partly in response to lockdown conditions and has achieved great success since then. The intention has been to profile the work that WISER researchers do, individually and in conversation with each other and with the global academic community. The Institute has grown exponentially over the last several years and covers research themes including Knowledge Futures, Locations of African Critical Theory, Medical Humanities, Oceanic Humanities, STS in Africa, Digital Humanities, Law and Personhood - and has long pioneered a wide array of public humanities work. We are releasing this first Season to profile our work so far, which has received nearly 6000 listens on the African continent and around the world. Season Two will begin next Thursday and run until the end of the year. In 2021, we will innovate further and produce new formats and different kinds of interventions. We are proud of the range of interdisciplinary and intergenerational work that we do at WISER and we warmly invite you to listen with us and offer us feedback, as we draw the work of the seminar room into the public domain.
The members of the Podcast Group at WISER are Sarah Nuttall, Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, Isabel Hofmeyr, Bronwyn Kotzen, Mpho Matsipa, Achille Mbembe and Tinashe Mushakavanhu.
In the latest episode of The WISER Podcast, Melanie Boehi discusses botanical gardens and public parks in the time of the Covid-19 pandemic with Luciano Concheiro San Vicente and Phakamani m’Afrika Xaba.
The WISER Podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts or Spotify
Melanie Boehi is a Visiting Researcher at WISER and a Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) Postdoctoral Fellow. She is currently finalising a book about the history of the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden in Cape Town and doing research about journalist Ruth Weiss.
Phakamani m’Afrika Xaba is a senior horticulturalist and researcher based at the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden in Cape Town. He is the co-author of the book Traditionally Useful Plants of Africa: Their Cultivation and Use (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
Luciano Concheiro San Vicente holds a Ph.D. in history from The National Autonomous University of Mexico and an M.Phil in Sociology from Cambridge University. He is currently doing research about the history of Chapultepec, Mexico's most important urban park.
In the latest episode of The WISER Podcast, Makhosazana Xaba discusses the life and work of Noni Jabavu, memoirist, reader, radio broadcaster and columnist.
The WISER Podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Makhosazana Xaba has published three poetry collections, compiled and edited five anthologies and is the 2014 co-winner of the SALA Nadine Gordimer Short Story Award for her collection, Running and other stories. She has twice been a Writer in Residence at WISER and is currently a Research Associate at the Institute working on a biography of Noni Jabavu.
In the latest episode of The WISER Podcast, Ruth Sacks discusses post-independence sites in Kinshasa, focusing especially on L’Échangeur [the Exchange] in Limete as a means of understanding processes of disrepair and reconstruction in the city today.
The WISER Podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Ruth Sacks is a South African visual artist and academic based in Johannesburg who completed her PhD at WiSER and currently holds a Postdoc at the SARChI Chair for Social Change at the University of Fort Hare. Sacks’ first academic book, Congo Style: From Art Nouveau to African Independence (Michigan University Press and Wits University Press), is forthcoming in 2021.
In the latest episode of The WiSER Podcast, Confidence Joseph, Ryan Poinasamy, Meghan Judge and Mapule Mohulatsi go below the water line as they describe new avenues for research in the environmental humanities and critical ocean studies.
The WiSER Podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Confidence Joseph is an African Literature doctoral candidate at the University of the Witwatersrand.
Mapule Mohulatsi is a reader and writer from Johannesburg. She is completing a PhD in African Literature at Wits.
Ryan Poinasamy is based in the department of African Literature at the University of Witwatersrand.
Meghan Judge is an artist and researcher working on a PhD in creative work at the Wits School of Arts.
All four are fellows of the Oceanic Humanities for the Global South programme at WiSER.
In the latest episode of The WISER Podcast, Pamila Gupta discusses the visual archive of Ricardo Rangel, photographs that document the last days of Portuguese colonial rule in Mozambique. Pamila is in conversation with Drew Thompson, Director of Africana Studies at Bard College.
The WISER Podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Pamila Gupta is a Professor of historical anthropology at WiSER. Her latest book is Portuguese Decolonization in the Indian Ocean World: History and Ethnography (2019).
In the latest episode of The WISER Podcast, Hlonipha Mokoena speaks about Frontier Dandies in Colonial South Africa.
The WISER Podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify
Hlonipha Mokoena received her Ph.D. from the University of Cape Town in 2005. She is an Associate Professor at WiSER (Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research) at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. She is the author of Magema Fuze: The Making of a Kholwa Intellectual (2011).
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