Supported by Professors Catherine Albertyn and David Hornsby, WiSER's Professor Hlonipha Mokoena led the delegation from the Wits Panel on Funding Model(s) for Higher Education in South Africa in making a submission to the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into Higher Education Funding. For more, see here.
The next in the Wits City Institute’s Seminar Series for Term 3 2016 will be held on Friday 26 August 2016 at the Wits Anthropology Museum Central Block, Wits University Main Campus, Braamfontein.
Animist Modernity and Spatial Subjectivity in Africa: Thinking Through the Road in African Literature
Hlonipha Mokoena speaks to The Academic Citizen about South Africa's current higher education crisis and the Commission of Inquiry into Higher Education and Training.
Achille Mbembe published 'The Age of Humanism is Ending' in the Mail and Guardian in December 2016. Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee and Anil Persaud have written a response to that article.
Africa's Great Civilizations - a new television series hosted by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. - will be aired by PBS in the United States in February 2017. Hlonipha Mokoena is featured in its first trailer.
An English edition of Achille Mbembe's Critique de la raison negre will be published by Duke University Press in 2017. Critique of Black Reason was translated by Laurent Dubois.
Achille Mbembe will take part in the first Night of Ideas and Philosophy to be held in New York. The event is organised by the Brooklyn Public Library and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy.
Achille Mbembe will participate in and deliver the keynote lecture at the conference 'African Migration in Comparative Perspective' Duke University. See here for the conference programme.
Sarah Nuttall and Achille Mbembe will present keynote addresses at the 2017 Spring School held on 5-8 April at the University of Tübingen's Weltethos Institute. The theme of this year's School is 'Participatory Cultures and New Ethical Paradigms in the Global South.'
Achille Mbembe will present a keynote address at the Butler Conference organised by the Research Institute for the Humanities CLUE+ at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, on 5-7 April 2017.
For more information, about the conference, see here. The programme is available here.
Darwin's Hunch: Science, Race, and the Search for Human Origins (Jacana, 2016) by WiSER associate Christa Kuljian has been long listed for the prestigious 2017 Alan Paton Non-Fiction Award. For the full list see here.
The Wits Institute of Social and Economic Research is pleased to announce that Achille Mbembe has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Founded in 1780, the Academy is both a learned society and independent policy research centre. It recognises achievement across academia, the arts, science, business, and government, and currently includes Nobel Prize winners, Pulitzer Prize winners, MacArthur Fellows, and luminaries who shape contemporary politics, policy, and society.
Hlonipha Mokoena, Achille Mbembe, and others will discuss the contemporary South African art scene at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris on 27 April 2017 at 17:30. The debate forms part of a broader exhibition of South African art at the Foundation, and will be live streamed on YouTube. For more information, see here.
The Wits Writing Centre will host Christa Kuljian, author of Sanctuary and Darwin’s Hunch, to present a workshop on writing about social justice issues in a way that will help draw in your audience. The workshop will focus on writing narrative non-fiction, and explore techniques such as writing in scenes, developing character, details and plot, and making use of dialogue. Telling true stories of real people in this way can help draw attention to social justice issues whi
Achille Mbembe will discuss racial violence with Taiye Selasi and David Theo Goldberg at 'Dictionary of Now' on 11 May at 7pm, an event organised by Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin. For more information, see here.
WiSER’s 2017 Winter Programme in Critical Thought will run from July to September this year. As in 2016, we will design and curate a cluster of afternoon symposia, conferences, seminars and public events, many of them in collaboration with other institutes or departments.
Writer-in-residence at WiSER, Bongani Madondo, has recently published an essay in the New Yorker. He writes about South African photographer Sabelo Mlangeni.
WiSER Research Associate Bongani Madondo has been shortlisted for the UJ Prize for South African Writing for his recent book Sigh, the Beloved Country.
Achille Mbembe and Sarah Nuttall will speak at 'The Critical Tasks of the University,' a conference organised by the International Consortium of Critical Theory Programmes at the University of Bologna, 22-24 July 2017. For more information and for the programme, see here.
Hlonipha Mokoena was interviewed recently by Eusebius McKaiser on Radio 702 and CapeTalk. She discussed the history and meanings of the knobkerrie. The podcast is available here.
On 23-24 October 2017, the Université catholique de Louvain will hold a workshop on Achille Mbembe's work, before awarding him with an honorary doctorate. For more information, see here.
Achille Mbembe will take part in this year's Conrad Festival, alongside Siri Hustvedt, Agneta Pleijel, Adam Hochschild, Wojciech Brzoska, Maria Dąbrowska, Frédéric Boyer and Serge Bloch. The Festival takes place in Krakow, Poland, 23-29 October. For more information, see here.
Libération interviews Felwine Sarr and Achille Mbembe about their new, co-edited volume Ecrire l'Afrique-Monde. They discuss the 'Africanisation of the planetary question', among other topics.
WiSER associate Zanele Muholi mounts her debut solo exhibition in the Netherlands at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam from 8 July to 15 October 2017. See Zanele discussing the exhibition here.
