The WiSER Podcast | Season Five
In Episode One of Season Five of The WiSER Podcast, the Reverend Frank Chikane and his son Regotsofetse Chikane, recollect and discuss the moment – separated by 30 years – they were each arrested for treason – by the apartheid and post-apartheid states, successively. As prominent anti-apartheid activist and #FeesMustFall activist respectively, they retell their experiences - and the conversation reflects on the state of a democratic South Africa, the current dangers it faces and what choosing to fight for a more democratic state has meant and will come to mean, then and now.
Podcasts
In Episode 8 of Season 2 of The WISER Podcast, Charne Lavery discusses how theory from the south can be taken further south, towards the currents and creatures of the Southern Ocean.
The WISER Podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Charne Lavery is a Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Pretoria and a Research Fellow in the Oceanic Humanities for the Global South project (www.oceanichumanities.com) based at WISER. Her work explores literary and cultural representations of the deep ocean, the Indian Ocean, and the Southern Ocean and Antarctic seas, researching oceanic underworlds of the global South in a time of climate change.
In Episode 7 of Season 2 of The WISER Podcast, Keith Breckenridge discusses Biometric Capitalism and African economics in the 21st Century.
The WISER Podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Keith Breckenridge is a Professor of History, and Deputy Director of WISER.
In Episode 6 of Season 2 of The WISER Podcast, Sarah Nuttall discusses her thoughts on the “redistributed university”. Using Covid-19 as a point of departure, she considers new and older challenges that have contributed to redefining institutions of higher learning. As the university constantly reconfigures itself in response to multiple pressures and struggles, including economic pressures, struggles for social justice and rapid technological change, she asks - concretely and speculatively - how we might approach the institution in its present and historical formation.
The WISER Podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Sarah Nuttall is Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies and the Director of WISER. Her research focuses on literary and visual cultures, city lives and forms and critical cultural theory. She has authored or edited many influential books, published more than 60 articles and book chapters and her work is widely cited across disciplines. For eight years she has directed WISER, one of the largest and most established Humanities Institutes across the global South.
Photo of Sisonke by Iain and Erick Regnard
In Episode 4 of Season 2 of The WISER Podcast, Shireen Hassim and Sisonke Msimang discuss the life, politics and legacy of Winnie Mandela.
The WISER Podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Shireen Hassim is Canada 150 Research Chair in Gender and African Politics and Visiting Professor at WiSER. She has published three articles on Winnie Madikizela-Mandela: “A Life of Refusal: Winnie Madikizela Mandela and violence in South Africa (Storia della Donne); “Not Just Nelson’s Wife: Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Violence and Radicalism in South Africa”, and “The Impossible Contract: The Political and Private Marriage of Nelson and Winnie Mandela” (both in the Journal of Southern African Studies).
Sisonke Msimang is the author of Always Another Country: A Memoir of Exile and Home (2017) and The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela (2018) and is a Writing Fellow at WISER.
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In Episode 3 of Season 2 of The WISER Podcast, Sakiru Adebayo discusses what it means to be melancholic, especially in the time of a pandemic. He suggests that Covid-19 melancholy can be thought of in part as a condition yet to come, as we postpone aspects of our reckoning with loss to the post-Covid period. He reads the temper of the social and political present as a melancholic one.
The WISER Podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Sakiru Adebayo has a PhD in African Literature. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at WISER. He is interested in questions of memory, mourning and melancholy in African literary works and cultural practices.
In Episode 2 of Season 2 of The WISER Podcast, Terry Kurgan discusses two photographs, each found in her father’s possession, and both taken on the edge of graves, one in Ein al-Beida, Palestine and the other in a forest just outside the town of Panevėžys in Lithuania. She considers the two photographs as entry points to a new book she has just begun that will traverse perhaps the darkest period of mid-twentieth century European and Middle Eastern History.
The WISER Podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Terry Kurgan is a visual artist and writer based in Johannesburg. Her recent publication, Everyone is Present, written while she was a Writing Fellow and Artist in Residence at WiSER, won South Africa’s premier literary prize, the 2019 Sunday Times Alan Paton Award. It was also shortlisted for the 2019 Photo Arles Book Prize, and selected as a Finalist for the 2019 New York based National Jewish Book Awards. Terry is currently a Research Associate at WISER, working on a new book project, and co-director of the independent publishing project, Fourthwall Books. www.terrykurgan.com
In the first episode of Season 2 of The WISER Podcast, Johannes Machinya discusses the everyday experience of living with potential or imminent arrest and deportation for undocumented migrants in South Africa.
The WISER Podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Johannes Machinya is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow co-hosted by WISER and the African Studies Center (ASC) at the University of Michigan. His research focuses on migration, labour and politics, migration control and the temporalities associated with waiting and the anticipation of deportation.
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