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2019-20
Reading the bloods
10 October 2019
Resisting tropes of “emergence” through which Black South African artists and writers are often understood, I read some influential novels and visual artworks not as works by new-blood bornfrees but instead as part of a trend in which artists and writers turn their gaze to intimately configured scenes of care.
Congolese Independence, Shared Memories
31 October 2019
This lecture will explore the legacy of Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo who was assassinated in 1961, through the Congolese artist Georges Senga’s series of photographic diptychs, Une vie après la mort (2012).
Language change and evolution: the dynamism of Sheng, a variety of Kenyan Swahili
21 November 2019
Swahili has undergone dramatic changes over the centuries with influences from Persian, Arabic, English, German and Portuguese. Sheng, a variety of Kenyan Swahili carries on these dynamics by adopting modern varieties of English, indigenous Kenyan languages and morphosyntactic restructuring.
The rise and fall of African socialist thought in the global 20th century
5 December 2019
In this talk, which draws on a contribution to a global history of socialism, I will explore African socialist thought in the 1950s to 1970s and situate it in the context of decolonization, the aftermath of the global depression of the 1930s, and the Second World War.