Litheko Modisane

Litheko Modisane teaches in the Centre for Film and Media, University of Cape Town. Until the end of 2014, Modisane lectured in the Department of African Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, where he also earned his PhD. Modisane is a former post-doctoral fellow in the Archive & Public Culture research initiative, University of Cape Town (2010 – 2011), and a former visiting scholar at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (August 2010 – February 2011). He contributes to a wide range of topics within the fields of film, television and African literature, including the role of film in public critical engagements and sartorial readings of politics, cinema and heritage in the postcolony. Modisane is currently writing a book on the representation of Nelson Mandela in cinema and television. His book, South Africa’s Renegade Reels: The Making and Public Lives of Black-Centred Films, was published by Palgrave Macmillan (USA) in 2013. It focuses on the public lives of iconic black-centred films in South Africa, from the colonial to the post-apartheid eras. Such films, Modisane's work demonstrates, are catalysts for public reflections on social and political issues germane to anti-apartheid politics and fledgling democracies.