18/05/2026
Please join WiCDS and the Innovation Foundation for Democracy for a SARChI Chair Distinguished Lecture, featuring Jordache A. Ellapen in conversation with Victoria Collis-Buthelezi and Sarah Nuttall.
‘Q***ring the Archive: Indenture Aesthetics and South African Blackness’ is based on Ellapen’s recently published book, Indenture Aesthetics: Afro-Indian Femininities and the Q***r Limits of South African Blackness (DUP, 2025). This lecture will introduce a few conceptual terms – indenture aesthetics, Afro-normativity, Afro-Indian, Blackening – thinking with and alongside South African Black Feminists - and will discuss the ethical politics of solidarity and coalitional building in post-apartheid South Africa.
Jordache A. Ellapen is Associate Professor of Feminist Studies in Culture and Media at the University of Toronto. He has spent the last two years (2024-2026) as an Associate Professor of Black Studies at the University of Rochester. With graduate training in South Africa and the USA, Ellapen works at the intersections of Global Black Studies, Feminist and Q***r Studies, and Visual Culture and Performance Studies. He has a particular interest in the making of race within the Indian Ocean world and genealogies of Blackness outside of the Atlantic World. He is the author of Indenture Aesthetics: Afro-Indian Femininities and the Q***r Limits of South African Blackness (Duke University Press, 2025), and a number of award-winning articles.
Tuesday, 19 May, 13.00, online and at the WiCDS office (13th floor, Es’Kia Mphahlele Building, cnr Jorrisen and Jan Smuts, above Wits Art Museum). Refreshments will be served.
Registration link for online attendance: https://wits-za.zoom.us/meeting/register/K1WT8dXeSL2Z3EJPI_oBDQ #/registration
***rness -IndianFemininities
