Itumeleng Wa Lehulere shares his journey as an artist and anti-apartheid activist during South African apartheid and beyond. 

Join us on May 5 and 6 to celebrate the careers of two former GES/ICGC faculty members, Helga Leitner and Eric Sheppard.  The event will take place in the Mississippi Room of Coffman Union.  See the full schedule of events.  

Dhrijyoti's research views islands as precarious zones of survival that are potentially generative by nature and constitutive of a constant anarchic disorder of enmeshed alliances between human dwellers and non-human agents. He is an Assamese writer and a translator. Currently, he is working on two book-length translation projects based around riverine lives in the Brahmaputra Valley of Assam, India.

Marie's dissertation work was conducted in collaboration with the Rwanda Agriculture Board and the International Center for Global Agriculture, which pivoted to a fully remote research project during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

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Beverly studies migrant labor, land law, and Indigeneity in maritime Southeast Asia and her work has been published in interdisciplinary venues such as Philosophy Today and Culture, Theory and Critique.

Post-apartheid South Africa still struggles to overcome the past, not just because the material conditions of apartheid linger but because the intellectual conditions it created have not been thoroughly dismantled. The system of ‘petty apartheid’, which controlled the minutia of everyday life, became a means of dragooning human beings into adapting to increasingly mechanized forms of life that stifle desire and creative endeavor. As a result, apartheid is incessantly repeated in the struggle to move beyond it. In Undoing Apartheid, Premesh Lalu argues that only an aesthetic education can lead to a future beyond apartheid. To find ways to escape the vicious cycle, he traces the patterns created by three theatrical works by William Kentridge, Jane Taylor, and the Handspring Puppet Company – Faustus in Africa, Woyzeck on the Highveld, and Ubu and the Truth Commission – which coincided with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of apartheid. Through the analysis of these works, Lalu uncovers the roots of modern thinking about race and affirms the need to revitalize a post-apartheid reconciliation endowed with truth – if only to keep alive the rhyme of hope and history.

This cultural history of Athlone, one of apartheid’s ‘dumping grounds’ for the victims of forced removals, is something of a delight, providing an intimate snapshot of a bygone era that continues to live in the hearts and imaginations of many of the town’s residents. At the film’s centre is the Kismet theatre.Making engaging use of contemporary interviews and historical anecdotes, the film manages to sidestep sentimentality and nostalgia in favour of an emotional realism.

Isaac's research centers on the intersections between Queer/Trans* Theory, Post-Colonial Theory, Marxism, and Indigenous Studies.

Learning objectives:

At the end of this talk, participants will be able to answer:
- Why the world faces grave risks of future pandemics and epidemics;
- Why animal health and human health are intertwined; and
- Why climate change poses major pandemic risks.