Wits Apartheid Archive project calls for abstracts

22 Mar 2011
22 Mar 2011

The 3rd Apartheid Archive Conference: Narratives, Nostalgia, Nationhoods will be taking place at the University of the Witwatersrandfrom 27 to 29 July 2011. 

The aim of the conference is to explore various deployments of nostalgia in different global contexts, including post-authoritarian and post-conflict societies, as well as contexts characterised by social, political and economic instability, fragmentation and disintegration.

The organisers invite all those interested in the area of nostalgia, but especially those working with nostalgia and national archives, to submit abstracts for this conference by 31 March 2011.

Keynote speakers and panelists will include Jacob Dlamini, Mark Gevisser, Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, Brendon Hamber, William Kentridge, Chris van Wyk and Zoë Wicomb.

'The Apartheid Archive project is an international research initiative that aims to examine the nature of the experiences of racism of (particularly 'ordinary') South Africans under the old apartheid order and their continuing effects on individual and group functioning in contemporary South Africa. The project is fundamentally premised on the understanding that traumatic experiences from the past will constantly attempt to re-inscribe themselves (often in masked form) in the present, if they are not acknowledged, interrogated and addressed. Specifically, we believe that it is important for South African society to review, so as to acknowledge and deal with its past, in order to better manage its present and future.'

Online submission of abstracts at:

http://www.apartheidarchive.org

Enquiries:

Nomonde Gogo