WALE 5.0 – Literary Experience
JT Communication Solutions
05/01/2012 12:53:48
The Literary Experience at WALE 5.0 is packed with book launches, round table discussions, workshops, seminars, lectures and poetry readings.
It’s everything a bibliophile’s heart could desire. So come and celebrate literature at the WITS Main Campus, in Braamfontein, from 9 to 12 May.
Sonic Spaces of the Karoo by Marie Jorritsma. A pioneering study of the sacred music of three coloured peoples’ church congregations in the rural town of Graaff-Reinet. Jorritsma’s findings counteract the lingering stereotype that coloured music is inferior to European or African music and that they should not or do not have a cultural identity.
Visual Century by Jillian Carman is an ambitious four-volume publication that reappraises one hundred years of South African visual art from a post-apartheid perspective. It is the first wide-ranging survey of contemporary art incorporating multiple writers and perspectives.
Rethinking Eastern African Literary and Intellectual Landscapes edited by James Ogude, Grace Musila and Dina Ligaga. The book brings together diverse voices, genres and intellectual trajectories in an attempt to reflect on the state of production of, and engagement with Eastern African Literary cultures. At the core of these essays is Eastern Africa’s entanglement with the legacy of colonial modernity.
The WALE 5.0 Literary Experience has variety of panel discussions and public debate including a jazz criticism writing workshop where experienced music writers and scholars associated with Wits will discuss the state of the art of music writing in South Africa. A workshop in the techniques of the genre follows for aspiring writers and students.
Reviewing the Arts in South Africa will host a panel discussion and invite debate around the “why, what and how” of arts writing in South Africa.
Lectures on offer include The Wits School of the Arts Open Lecture Series:
Professor Eric Worby presents “This Time for Africa? Continental Identification, National Belonging and Xenophobic Violence in the Shadow of the 2010 FIFA World Cup”.
There is also the Wits Humanities Graduate Centre Key Thinkers Lecture Series: Prof. Dilip Menon presents “Wang Hui: Thinking Western Modernity from Asia”.
A poetry reading – Hand Me That Beaker Filled With Dark Delight by poet Prof. Peter Horn and Literary Readings convened by Dr. Bronwyn Law-Viljoen also form part of the programme.
Access to WALE 5.0 and all performances, exhibitions, screenings are free.
Jazz Criticism Writing Workshop
Date: Wednesday 9 May
Time: 10h15-12h00
Venue: Room 116 Wits School of the Arts
Convener: Lindelwa Dalamba
Experienced music writers and scholars associated with Wits will discuss the state of the art of music writing in South Africa. They will also conduct a workshop focusing on the techniques of the genre for aspiring writers and students.
SWOP Seminar on Violence: Narratives on Trial: The Vaal Uprising as an Event and Discourse
Date: Wednesday 9 May
Time: 16h00-18h00
Venue: Humanities Graduate Centre Seminar Room
Speaker: Franziska Rueedi.
Convener: Prof Karl Von Holdt
Literary Readings
Date: Wednesday 9 May
Time: 16h00-18h00
Venue: Writing Centre
Convener: Dr. Bronwyn Law-Viljoen
Panel Discussion and Public Debate: Reviewing the Arts in South Africa
Date: Wednesday 9 May
Time: 18h30-19h30
Venue: Pentz Bookshop
Convener: Dr Chris Thurman
Panel discussion and public debate around the “why, what and how” of arts writing in South Africa.
Poetry Reading: Hand Me That Beaker Filled With Dark Delight
Poet: Prof Peter Horn
Date: Thursday 10 May
Time: 13h00-14h00
Venue: Pentz Bookshop
Launch: Micampus Magazine
Date: Thursday 10 May
Time: 13h00-15h00
Venue: Humanities Grad Centre Seminar Room
Editor: Mabogoshi Matlala
Mabogoshi Matlala is a MA student in Media Studies. She holds a BA degree in Media Studies and International Relations and a BA Hons degree in Media Studies from Wits. Currently Editor of MiCampus Magazine.
Wits School of the Arts Open Lecture Series:This Time for Africa? Continental Identification, National Belonging and Xenophobic Violence in the Shadow of the 2010 FIFA World Cup
Speaker: Professor Eric Worby
Date: Thursday 10 May
Time: 13h15-14h15
Venue: Apollonia Theatre
Convener: Prof Raimi Gbadamosi
Duration: 45 Minutes followed by 30 minutes audience Q and A session
The series will be ‘illustrated’ lectures aimed at a general audience, featuring research into areas of personal interest and new thought. The lectures will provide space for experimental discourse, introduce new conceptual frameworks, and excite the imagination.
It is not expected that the lectures will be ‘geared’ or ‘slanted’ towards artists, rather it is desired that the nature of ‘new’ ideas and methodologies will challenge established frameworks and encourage dialogue.
Professor Eric Worby is the Director of The Graduate Centre for the Humanities at The University of the Witwatersrand
Wits Humanities Graduate Centre Key Thinkers Lecture Series: Wang Hui: Thinking Western Modernity from Asia
Speaker: Prof DilipMenon
Date: Thursday10 May
Time: 16h00-18h00
Venue: Humanities Graduate Centre Seminar Room
Convener: Prof Eric Worby
Professor Wang Hui
Wang Hui is a professor in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature atTsinghua University in Beijing. His research focuses on contemporary Chinese literature and intellectual history. He was named as one of the top 100 public intellectuals in the world in May 2008 by US magazine Foreign Policy. He has also been Visiting Professor at Harvard, Edinburgh, Bologna (Italy), Stanford, UCLA, Berkeley, and the University of Washington, among others. In March 2010, he appeared as the keynote speaker at the annual meeting for the Association of Asian Scholars.
Wang Hui participated in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and was sent to “re-education” for a year. He repeatedly calls attention to the human suffering that economic reforms have bestowed on farmers, laid-off workers, women migrants, and other weak sectors of society. He has been called the leader of the New Left – although he has advised journalists that he prefers not to embrace this label.
Professor Dilip Menon
Director, Centre for Indian Studies in Africa and Mellon Chair in Indian Studies
University of the Witwatersrand – Responsible for guiding research, fund raising, overseeing academic projects
Book Launch: Sonic Spaces of the Karoo
Author: Marie Jorritsma
Date: Thursday 10 May
Time: 18h00-20h00
Venue: Room 116 Wits School of the Arts
Synopsis:
Sonic Spaces of the Karoo is a pioneering study of the sacred music of three coloured peoples’ church congregations in the rural town of Graaff-Reinet. Jorritsma’s fieldwork involves an investigation of the choruses, choir music and hymns of the Karoo region to present a history of the people’s traditional, religious and cultural identity in song. This music is examined as part of a living archive preserved by the community in the face of a legacy of slavery and colonial as well as apartheid oppression.
Jorritsma’s findings counteract the lingering stereotype that coloured music is inferior to European or African music and that coloured people should not or do not have a cultural identity.
Sonic Spaces of the Karoo seeks to eradicate that bias and articulate a more legitimate place for these people in the contemporary landscape of South Africa.
Biography
Marie Jorritsma completed her doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia in 2006 and is currently a Senior Lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand. Her research has appeared in the accredited journals ‘African Music’ and ‘South African Music Studies’ and her monograph,’ Sonic Spaces of the Karoo: The Sacred Music of a South African Coloured Community’ (2011) is co-published by Temple University and Wits University Press. Last year, Marie was awarded the prestigious Friedel Sellschop award for young researchers at Wits.
Publisher Wits University Press
Round-table: Women in Conflict: Democratic Republic of Congo
Convener: Professor Véronique Tadjo
Date: Thursday 10 May
Time: 18h00-20h00
Venue: Humanities Graduate Centre
Biography
VéroniqueTadjo is Professor and Head of French Studies at Wits University. Prior to joining the University of the Witwatersrand in January 2007, she held a number of roles such as Translator and Consultant in Nairobi, Kenya (from July 1994 to 1998); Assistant Lecturer at the English Department of the University of Abidjan (from October 1988 to June 1993); Assistant Lecturer at the French Department of Lagos University in Nigeria (from 1987 to1988); Assistant Lecturer at the English Department of the University of Abidjan (from October 1982 to June 1984); Assistant Lecturer at the English Department of the Ecole Normale Supérieure of Abidjan (from October 1981 to June 1982); and English teacher at the Lycée Moderne de Korhogo in the North of the Ivory Coast (from October 1979 to June 1981). Between 1999 and 2006, Tadjo was also a full-time writer and visual artist.
ITCH Magazine Showcase and Indaba
Date: Friday 11 May
Time: 13h00-15h00
Venue: Humanities Graduate Centre Seminar Room
Convener: MehitaIqani – Founding Editor
Itch is a South African born, internationally relevant online/offline periodical featuring established and up and coming literary talent, as well as a variety of visual and multimedia work. Submissions are open to anyone. ITCH aims to create a space for creative expression and exchange; it is an experimental media project for you, by you.
Submissions are loosely categorised as:
MetaText – Non-fiction, essays, polemic, book reviews and more
SubText – Narrative, short stories, plays and more
PreText – Poetry, experimental writing, sound art and more
NonText – Graphics, drawings, photography, film, animation and more
Book Launch: Visual Century
Author: Jillian Carman
Date: Saturday 12 May
Time: 10h00-12h00
Venue: Humanities Graduate Centre Seminar Room
Synopsis:
Visual Century is an ambitious four-volume publication that reappraises 100 years of South African visual art from a post-apartheid perspective. It is the first wide-ranging survey of its contemporary art to incorporate multiple writers and perspectives.
By contextualising South African art within broader historical currents, Visual Century makes a major contribution towards the construction of an inclusive national archive, as well as to the development of an inclusive international art history. Wide-ranging and in-depth essays by over 30 contributors, including many of South Africa’s leading art historians, cultural commentators and artists make it an indispensable resource for curators, historians, students and artists. Lavish full colour illustrations, often of rare or seldom-seen artworks, make this collection a treasure for all art lovers with an interest in South African art.
Biography
Jillian Carman is an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Arts, Wits University, and the University of Johannesburg’s Research Centre, Visual Identities in Art and Design. Her research interests, on which she has published widely, are the visual arts and the nature of museums in South Africa, with a focus on early twentieth-century and current arts, culture and heritage issues. She was formerly a curator at the Johannesburg Art Gallery, whose founding was the topic of her PhD thesis and subsequent book, Uplifting the colonial Philistine: Florence Phillips and the making of the Johannesburg Art Gallery (Wits University Press, 2006), which received a Wits University Research Committee Publication Award.
Publisher: Wits University Press
Book Launch: Rethinking Eastern African Literary and Intellectual Landscapes
Editors: James Ogude, Grace Musila and Dina Ligaga
Discussant: Prof Pumla Gqola
Date: Saturday 12 May
Time: 12h30-14h30
Venue: Pentz Bookshop
Convener: Prof. James Ogude
Synopsis:
Rethinking Eastern African Literary and Intellectual Landscapes brings together diverse voices, genres and intellectual trajectories in an attempt to reflect on the state of production of, and engagement with, Eastern African Literary cultures.
The book re-visits established intellectual debates and canonical texts, while simultaneously offering a forceful engagement with popular arts and performance; particularly the manner in which genres such as drama, music and new media offer important insights into everyday life in the region. At the core of these essays is Eastern Africa’s entanglement with the legacy of colonial modernity. The book also speaks to rich and complex sources of Eastern African cultures and how these continue to be negotiated through multiple currents, both local and transnational.
About the Editors:
James Ogudeis a Professor of African Literature in the School of Literature and Language studies at the University of the Witwatersrand. His research interests include the African novel and the Postcolony, Popular Culture in East Africa and Black intellectual traditions. He is the author of Ngugi’s Novels and African History: Narrating the Nation, published by Pluto Press (1999), and he has edited numerous works including, Urban Legends, Colonial Myths: Popular Culture and Literature in East Africa, published by Africa World Press (2007).
Grace Musila is a Senior Lecturer in the English Department at Stellenbosch University. Her research interests include Gender Studies, Eastern and Southern African Literatures, African Popular Culture, African Intellectual Archives and postcolonial whiteness in Africa. She has published widely in these areas.
Dina Ligaga is a Lecturer in the Department of Media Studies, University of the Witwatersrand. Her research interests include popular culture, broadcast and new media cultures and postcolonial literature. She has published journal articles in these areas and co-edited the book, Radio in Africa: Publics, Cultures, Communities (wits Press, 2011).
For more information contact Ayob/Mo/Vuyo on info@jtcomms.co.za 011 788 7631/2
Issued by JT Communication Solutions on behalf of Wits Arts Literature Festival.
Artslink.co.za Account:
Vanessa Perumal
JT Communication Solutions
vanessa@jtcomms.co.za
011 788 7631
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Wits Arts Literature Festival (WALE 5.0)
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Article source: http://www.artlink.co.za/news_article.htm?contentID=29909