The visionary bell hooks died at the end of 2021. There were limited opportunities to grapple with the magnitude of this loss. This event was an intimate gathering to begin navigating the loss, and to reflect on the hope of hooks' writing; a breather to reflect and pick up the threads.
Our
Speakers
Kelly Gillespie is a political and legal anthropologist at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), with a research focus on criminal justice in South Africa, and the ways in which criminal justice has become a vector for the continuation of apartheid relations. Prior to joining UWC in 2018, Gillespie worked for a decade in the Department of Anthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), serving as Head from 2015 to 2017. She writes and teaches about law and justice, urbanism, sexualities, race and the praxis of social justice.
Zethu Matebeni is a sociologist, activist and writer whose research focuses on African Queer Studies. She has edited various volumes on African LGBTQI life, including Reclaiming African: queer perspectives on sexual and gender identities (Modjaji, 2014); Queer in Africa: LGBTQI Identities, Citizenship and Activism (with Surya Munro and Vasu Reddy – Routledge, 2018); and Beyond the Mountain: queer life in 'Africa's gay capital' (with B Camminga – UNISA Press, 2020). Since 2020, she has been a visiting professor at the Nelson Mandela University’s Centre for Women and Gender Studies. She is the SARCHI Chair in Sexualities, Genders and Queer Studies at the University of Fort Hare.
Lebogang Ramafoko is a feminist and social activist, and Chief Executive Officer of Tekano, a non-profit organisation committed to building a more equitable South African society with improved health status across all populations. Prior to joining Tekano, Ramafoko was CEO of the Soul City Institute for 8 years, where she provided strategic leadership to the organisation during the implementation of large grants from the National Department of Health, PEPFAR, DFID, EU and the Global Fund. Ramafoko led the provisioning of Soul City into a Social Justice Organisation for young women and girls.
Polo Moji (Chair) is a lecture in the Department of English Literary Studies at the University of Cape Town. Moji specialises in comparative literature, working with both English and French/Francophone narrative forms. She has co-edited the special journal issues Ghostly Border-Crossings: Europe in Afrodiasporic Narratives (2019), "The Cinematic City: Desire, Form and the African Urban" (2019), Cinematic Imaginaries of the African City in Social Dynamics (2021). She led the organising team for the 4th African Feminisms Conference (November 2021). In 2022 Moji published the book; Gender and the Spatiality of Blackness in Contemporary AfroFrench Narratives: Black Flâneuses (Routledge, 2022).
Things Unfinished
We The Not-Not People!
Intersect
Things Unfinished
I am by Tandile Mbatsha