Knowledge-making in South African universities is set up and framed in particular ways, with a Euro-centric bias. We argue that many of the contributions that African first year entering students could make to this process of knowledge-making are dis-abled, leading to alienation. In this article, we argue for a different perspective and approach…

Following a global trend in humanities since the mid-1970s, South African humanities faculties began to include formal programmes in gender and sexualities studies from the mid-1990s on. While the immediate post-flag democratic era encouraged intellectual concentration on diverse questions of power and knowledge, the new century saw a decline in…

This short paper argues that the #RhodesMustFall movement, which originated at the University of Cape Town, has brought renewed attention to the need to decolonise the academy in South Africa. It further argues that the Humanities are ideally placed to engage with the intellectual problems and questions presented by the decolonisation debate. Deep…

This letter was first read as a seminar paper in the Institute for the Humanities in Africa at the University of Cape Town in which I offer a series of provocations about what our current moment asks of us. It is concerned with the future of literary and cultural studies (in English) at that university and in South Africa in the wake of the…

In this article we respond to the perceived crisis in humanities education in South Africa which posits firstly that large numbers of students are leaving this field and that secondly, the value of a humanities education has declined. To do this we track the enrolments and graduation rates in humanities at both undergraduate and postgraduate…