Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study

27/05/2026

JIAS Seminar Reminder

Join us at JIAS tomorrow evening for a hybrid seminar exploring the topic of “Counter-Accumulation as an Aesthetics of Repair”

Thursday, 28 May 2026
17:30 for 18:00 (SAST)
Hybrid (In-person & Online)
JIAS, 1 Tolip Street, Westdene & via Zoom
RSVP here: https://forms.office.com/r/8dK4mGe1CJ

How are Black Miami artists experimenting with form to serve as both a call for, and instantiation of, repair?

Prof Donette Francis is the 2026 JIAS Writing Fellow & the Director for the Center for Global Black Studies at the University of Miami. Her research, teaching, and writing investigate place, aesthetics, and cultural politics in the African Diaspora. She is the author of Fictions of Feminine Citizenship and is currently working on several book projects, including Creole Miami: Black Arts at the Hemispheric Crossroads.

We look forward to an engaging session and hope you can join us.

Counter-Accumulation as an Aesthetics of Repair

This talk begins with the question: How are Black Miami artists experimenting with form to serve as both a call for, and instantiation of, repair?
As part of her work in Black Miami Studies, Professor Donette Francis shapes this seminar around the recent work of the visual artist Charles Humes, Jr. – considering how his experiments with mosaic collages and watercolors counter the accumulative capitalist histories that shape the city’s urban and rural geographies.

Professor Donette Francis is a 2026 JIAS Writing Fellow and the Director for the Center for Global Black Studies at the University of Miami. Her research, teaching, and writing investigate place, aesthetic, and cultural politics in the African Diaspora. Professor Francis is the author of Fictions of Feminine Citizenship: Sexuality and the Nation in Contemporary Caribbean Literature.

Event Details:
Date: Thursday, 28 May 2026
Time: 17:30 for 18:00
Venue: JIAS, 1 Tolip Street, Westdene and Zoom (hybrid)

RSVP here: https://forms.office.com/r/8dK4mGe1CJ?origin=lprLink

25/05/2026

Counter-Accumulation as an Aesthetics of Repair

This talk begins with the question: How are Black Miami artists experimenting with form to serve as both a call for, and instantiation of, repair?
As part of her work in Black Miami Studies, Professor Donette Francis shapes this seminar around the recent work of the visual artist Charles Humes, Jr. – considering how his experiments with mosaic collages and watercolors counter the accumulative capitalist histories that shape the city’s urban and rural geographies.

Professor Donette Francis is a 2026 JIAS Writing Fellow and the Director for the Center for Global Black Studies at the University of Miami. Her research, teaching, and writing investigate place, aesthetic, and cultural politics in the African Diaspora. Professor Francis is the author of Fictions of Feminine Citizenship: Sexuality and the Nation in Contemporary Caribbean Literature.

Event Details:
Date: Thursday, 28 May 2026
Time: 17:30 for 18:00
Venue: JIAS, 1 Tolip Street, Westdene and Zoom (hybrid)

RSVP here: https://forms.office.com/r/8dK4mGe1CJ?origin=lprLink

22/05/2026

SEMINAR INVITATION

Join the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS) for a seminar on:

AI and African Literary Studies: Data Inequality and Diversification

This seminar explores how African literature remains particularly vulnerable to biases embedded in datasets created in and for the Global North.

Event Details:
Date: 25 May 2026
Time: 16:00 – 18:00 (SAST)
Venue: JIAS, 1 Tolip Street, Westdene
Format: In-person & Hybrid

RSVP here: https://forms.office.com/r/84jXdQJPw1?origin=lprLink

22/05/2026

With 2025 Writing Fellow, Itoro Bassey asking the pertinent question of: What Does It Mean to Be an African Daughter?

Through storytelling, performance and collective reflection, Itoro Bassey explored the emotional interior lives of African daughters navigating inheritance, migration, family loyalty, silence, joy, faith, contradiction and truth-telling.

15/05/2026

What Does It Mean to Be an African Daughter?

Through storytelling, performance, and collective reflection, writer Itoro Bassey explores the emotional interior lives of African daughters navigating inheritance, migration, family loyalty, silence, joy, faith, contradiction, and truth-telling.

Drawing from her forthcoming memoir-in-essays, Bassey examines what daughters inherit from families shaped by love, sacrifice, displacement, ambition, grief, humor, and survival—and what it means to tell fuller truths about where we come from.

Led by JIAS 2026 Writing Fellow Itoro Bassey, a Nigerian-American writer and journalist whose work moves between reportage and literary imagination. Her writing explores daughterhood, sensitivity, inherited memory, and the emotional and spiritual lives of Black women across the diaspora.

Event Details:
Date: 21 May 2026
Time: 17:30 for 18:00
Hybrid: In-person at JIAS (1 Tolip St, Westdene, Johannesburg) via Zoom

Rsvp here: https://forms.office.com/r/Rbp93VVj9b?origin=lprLink

15/05/2026

Flashback Friday to our two recent seminars with our 2026 JIAS Writing Fellows, namely Pulane Mlilo Mpondo and vangile gantsho.

Through dialogue, reading, and shared inquiry, the fellowship continues to create room for writers and thinkers to engage the complexities of our world while shaping new intellectual and creative possibilities.

Follow along as we share more from the JIAS 2026 Writing Fellows.

11/05/2026

JIAS had the privilege of hosting the launch of Ndibhala Intando Yam, the isiXhosa translation of Bantu Steve Biko's translation of I Write What I Like. It was an evening of rich reflection, language, memory, identity, and political thought centred on the enduring resonance of Steve Biko’s voice.

Thank you to Dr Thandokazi Maseti for guiding the conversation with such care and depth, and to Mr Nkosinathi Biko and Prof Bhaso Ndzendze for their thoughtful engagement on translation, history, and the significance of bringing Biko’s words into isiXhosa.

We extend our gratitude to the Steve Biko Foundation, everyone who joined us in person and online.

Swipe through moments from a powerful and memorable gathering.

08/05/2026

smallgirl ramblings on spiders and ghosts

“it is said that smallgirl – part water, part moon time, part wind – has been with her mothers all of their lives.”
Join us for “smallgirl ramblings on spiders and ghosts”, a reading from a work-in-progress.

Led by JIAS 2026 Writing Fellow vangile gantsho, a poet, healer, and teaching artist whose work explores memory, spirituality, and the lived experiences of Black women. Multivocal and multigenre, vangile’s project is a ‘re-membering” takes the form of a zuitsu, offering “clusters offering fragments” where “multiple bloodlines collide”.

vangile gantsho is the author of “red cotton” and “Undressing in Front of the Window,” co-founder of impepho press, and editor of New Coin Poetry Journal.

Event details
Thursday, 14 May 2026
17:30 for 18:00
Hybrid: In-person at JIAS (1 Tolip St, Westdene, Johannesburg) via Zoom

Rsvp here: https://forms.office.com/r/m9FLVrH7bp?origin=lprLink