Dr Danielle Becker

Dr. Danielle Becker is a lecturer in Media Studies at the Centre for Film and Media Studies. She holds an MA in Art History from the University of Manchester and a PhD in Media Studies from the University of Cape Town. As a lecturer she has taught at a number of South African institutions, both public and private, within a range of disciplines related to art, visual culture and media.

She is interested in visual media and historiography and the way in which discourses pertaining to African and South African art and visual culture have developed in relation to colonial, postcolonial and decolonial forces. Her research interests include South African and African art historiography, visual culture and questions of decolonisation as well as broader considerations of global media and its representation of culture.

Select publications:

de Kock (Becker), D. (2023). ‘Faces and Phases: Zanele Muholi’, in  Shinners, K (ed) ArtThrob: 25 Years of Art Writing in South Africa, 172–75. ArtThrob. 

Becker, D. (2022). ‘Afrofuturism and Animism as Method: Art History and Decolonisation in Black Panther’, in Gray, M., Horton, I. (eds). Seeing Comics through Art History: Alternative Approaches to the Form. Palgrave 

Becker, D. (2019) ‘Afrofuturism and Decolonization: using Black Panther as methodology’, Image and Text: a Journal for Design, 1(32), pp 1-21.  

Becker, D. (2018) ‘My Third Eye: Excerpts from a conversation with Lizette Chirrime’, Third Text Africa, pp. 108–121.

Becker, D. (2017) ‘Instagram as a potential platform for alternative Visual Culture in South Africa’, in Bunce, M., Franks, S., and Paterson, C. (eds) Africa’s Media Image in the 21st Century: From the ‘Heart of Darkness’ to ‘Africa Rising’. London; New York: Routledge.