BEGIN:VCALENDAR PRODID:-//TERMINALFOUR//SITEMANAGER V7.3//EN VERSION:2.0 BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART:20260519T130000 LOCATION:Braamfontein Campus East WiCDS office, 13th floor, Es'Kia Mphahlele Building
Also available online DESCRIPTION:Jordache A. Ellapen in conversation with Victoria Collis-Buthelezi and Sarah Nuttall
Queering the Archive: Indenture Aesthetics and South African Blackness
This talk uses Ellapen’s recently published book, Indenture Aesthetics: Afro-Indian Femininities and the Queer Limits of South African Blackness (DUP, 2025), to explore three aspects of his research that have informed his academic journey over the last 10 years. These three movements are a) indentureship and race in South Africa, b) African Queer Studies, Femininity, and Deviance, and c) creative research and the labour of knowledge production in post-apartheid South Africa. By using the term movement, his intention is to signal the fluidity between these three categories as well as their malleability. This lecture will introduce a few conceptual terms – indenture aesthetics, Afro-normativity, Afro-Indian, Blackening – and invites the audience to think with and alongside South African Black Feminists as well as Steve Biko, Fatima Meer, Simon Nkoli, and Keguro Macharia. This lecture rethinks what an ethical politics of solidarity and coalitional building can look like in post-apartheid South Africa, a society that continues to live in the afterlife of colonial-apartheid. 
Jordache A. Ellapen is Associate Professor of Feminist Studies in Culture and Media at the University of Toronto. He has spent the last two years (2024-2026) as an Associate Professor of Black Studies at the University of Rochester. With graduate training in South Africa and the USA, Ellapen works at the intersections of Global Black Studies, Feminist and Queer Studies, and Visual Culture and Performance Studies. He has a particular interest in the making of race within the Indian Ocean world and genealogies of Blackness outside of the Atlantic World. He is the author of Indenture Aesthetics: Afro-Indian Femininities and the Queer Limits of South African Blackness (Duke University Press, 2025), and a number of award-winning articles including, “Siyakaka Feminism: African Anality and the Politics of Deviance in FAKA’s Performance Art Praxis,” published in Feminist Studies
This lecture is presented by WiCDS and the Innovation Foundation for Democracy on behalf of the SARChI Chair in Critical Diversity Studies  X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:Jordache A. Ellapen in conversation with Victoria Collis-Buthelezi and Sarah Nuttall


Queering the Archive: Indenture Aesthetics and South African Blackness


This talk uses Ellapen’s recently published book, Indenture Aesthetics: Afro-Indian Femininities and the Queer Limits of South African Blackness (DUP, 2025), to explore three aspects of his research that have informed his academic journey over the last 10 years. These three movements are a) indentureship and race in South Africa, b) African Queer Studies, Femininity, and Deviance, and c) creative research and the labour of knowledge production in post-apartheid South Africa. By using the term movement, his intention is to signal the fluidity between these three categories as well as their malleability. This lecture will introduce a few conceptual terms – indenture aesthetics, Afro-normativity, Afro-Indian, Blackening – and invites the audience to think with and alongside South African Black Feminists as well as Steve Biko, Fatima Meer, Simon Nkoli, and Keguro Macharia. This lecture rethinks what an ethical politics of solidarity and coalitional building can look like in post-apartheid South Africa, a society that continues to live in the afterlife of colonial-apartheid. 


Jordache A. Ellapen is Associate Professor of Feminist Studies in Culture and Media at the University of Toronto. He has spent the last two years (2024-2026) as an Associate Professor of Black Studies at the University of Rochester. With graduate training in South Africa and the USA, Ellapen works at the intersections of Global Black Studies, Feminist and Queer Studies, and Visual Culture and Performance Studies. He has a particular interest in the making of race within the Indian Ocean world and genealogies of Blackness outside of the Atlantic World. He is the author of Indenture Aesthetics: Afro-Indian Femininities and the Queer Limits of South African Blackness (Duke University Press, 2025), and a number of award-winning articles including, “Siyakaka Feminism: African Anality and the Politics of Deviance in FAKA’s Performance Art Praxis,” published in Feminist Studies


This lecture is presented by WiCDS and the Innovation Foundation for Democracy on behalf of the SARChI Chair in Critical Diversity Studies 

SUMMARY:SARChI Distinguished Lecture: 'Queering the Archive: Indenture Aesthetics & South African Blackness' END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR