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University of Fort Hare
Together in Excellence
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The Fort Hare Institute of Social and Economic Research (FHISER) is a multi-disciplinary research institute
located within the University’s Govan Mbeki Research and Development Centre. |
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NOVEMBER 2008
New African Studies Masters Programme
Fort Hare Institute of Social and Economic Research (FHISER), in partnership with the African Studies Programme at the University of Oxford and the Rhodes-Mandela Foundation, will be offering a taught two-year Masters programme in African Studies through the Faculty of Humanities and Social Science at Fort Hare from 2009.
The programme will have two specialisations:
• South African Cultural Studies
• African Gender Studies
FHISER director, Professor Leslie Bank said the new programme was an important initiative, allowing the University to offer a taught Masters.
Furthermore, he said, it would allow students to conduct research in one of FHISER's four programme areas together with the specialisations listed above.
The two-year programme will consist of three examinable courses and a thesis/dissertation. The core course (January-June) will centre on the theory in the area of specialisation while the second course (July-September) will consist of methodology (based on the postgraduate methodology course taught at Oxford University ). It is envisaged that students will have a finalised proposal for their dissertation by the end of the first year. During the second year, students will take one course through FHISER and work on their dissertation. Graduates will come away with a Masters in Social Science specialising in either South African Cultural Studies or Gender Studies from the University of Fort Hare.
For more information on course details and the programme, contact Dr Nolwazi Mkhwanazi, e.mail: nmkhwanazi@ufh.ac.za or fax: +27 (0)86 623 4428
Click here to access the advertisement for the programme.
General information regarding postgraduate studies
Postgraduate application forms can be accessed online at:
http://www.ufh.ac.za/students/prospective/APPLY.html
Applications must be forwarded, together with the relevant documentation, by the closing date of 31 October 2008, marked for the attention of the Registrar, East London Campus, 50 Church Street, East London , 5200. Your application will be forwarded to the relevant Faculty for processing and notification of success.
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OCTOBER 2008
Historic Monica Hunter Wilson exhibition opens at EL Museum
SPRIGHTLY and debonair octogenarian, Dr Livingstone Mqotsi, paid tribute to Monica Hunter Wilson at the opening of an exhibition in honour of the groundbreaking anthropologist at the East London Museum this month.
Mqotsi, who first met Wilson as a Fort Hare first year arts student in 1945, described Wilson as not only a fine teacher “but also a friend”.
“The impression she made on me was so great that I have never been able to shake it off.”
He described how Wilson, then a young lecturer at the University of Fort Hare, suggested that he conduct an in-depth study into the ukuthwasa (the call to become a diviner in Xhosa society) all those years ago.
The project has finally borne fruit as Dr Mqotsi is about to launch his book on the subject, the culmination of many years as a frustrated and thwarted scholar under apartheid policies. Mqotsi, like so many intellectuals of the time, went into exile in frustration during the 1960s following the introduction of Bantu Education.
“It is fitting to celebrate a great mind and academic teacher at this exhibition in East London . We in the Eastern Cape have every reason to be proud of Hunter Wilson and her legacy,” he concluded.
The opening was attended by departmental officials from Arts and Culture including the head of the Heritage directorate under which museums fall, Similio Grootboom, the Museum director M Mgadla, students and friends of the museum.
To end the event, Mgadla called on the former Museum director, Ms Gill Vernon, who studied under Hunter Wilson at the University of Cape Town in the 1950s, who paid tribute to Hunter Wilson as an inspiring teacher.
The exhibition, a collaboration with Fort Hare Institute of Social and Economic Research (FHISER) which held a conference celebrating the centenary of Hunter Wilson's birth in June this year, will remain up for public viewing until January 2009.
The exhibition was put together by Andrew Bank and Jenny Sandler and was used as the backdrop to the conference Confronting Social Change: Revisiting the Life and Work of Monica Hunter Wilson, held in Hogsback and hosted by FHISER in June this year.
The exhibit shows a number of historic photographs, some taken in the field by Wilson herself, together with text and narratives explaining the significance of the different phases in Wilson's life.
It is housed in the anthropology wing at the East London Museum and visiting hours are 9am-5pm.
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SEPTEMBER 2008
FHISER FILM SEMINAR SERIES: 43 years of African cinema
 FHISER will be hosting an African Film Seminar Series, showing and introducing 11 films by African or Caribbean directors, starting the end of September 2008.
The seminar series is aimed at Fort Hare staff and students and is being presented by African film expert Max Annas and FHISER visiting fellow, Henriette Gunkel.
Annas has recently published a book on the late Senegalese director, Ousmane Sembène (1923-2007), along with a colleague, Annett Busch. The book is part of a prestigious series of interviews with international film directors published by the University Press of Mississippi.
Ousmane Sembène: Interviews collects conversations from the mid-1960s to 2005, and spans the breadth of Sembène's filmmaking career while also touching on his literary work and his role as a public intellectual. Many of these interviews appear here in English for the first time and come from French, German, African Diaspora, and Senegalese periodicals.
Annett Busch is a writer based in Munich, Germany. Her work has appeared in periodicals like Spex, CameraAustria, and Kolik and she runs the website missingimage.com. Max Annas is an author whose work has appeared in periodicals like Filmdienst and Ecrans d'Afrique. He has published several books, one on Claude Lévi-Strauss, and another on worldwide food production and a third one on genetically manipulated food. He is currently living in South Africa and writing a screenplay.
Annas and colleagues started showing African films in Cologne in the early 1990s and the movement gained momentum from there, Annas said. They (Annas and Busch) were approached by the University Press of Mississippi in 2003 to compile the book and were understandably keen to wrap the project up, following Sembène's death in June last year, Annas added.
All the films to be screened during the Seminar Series were produced in the last four decades. Some are more recent and can be considered the more interesting of their generation. However, the older ones remain important to this day. The directors are from North-, West- and Central Africa, from Southern Africa and Haiti. The films were produced in all sub-regions of the continent as well as in Europe.
Three years ago, African cinema turned 50, having started in 1955 when the Senegalese director Paulin Souimanou Vieyra produced, together with a group of befriended students in Paris, his legendary film Afrique sur Seine, which is widely recognised as the first African film.
The film was produced at a time when the continent was still, at least for most parts, colonised and the systematic production of films was impossible. This began to change with Ousmane Sembène's short film Borom Sarrett in 1963 after independence was achieved in most African countries. Only Egypt and South Africa had, back then, small film industries.
Only one film is an all-African (co-)production. Ousmane Sembène's last film, Molaadé, is produced with funding, technical skills and staff from Senegal, Burkina Faso, Morocco and Tunisia. It was Sembène's dream to create an independent African cinema, a dream realised in this all-African production.
All the films shown during the seminar series will be preceded by an introduction by visiting film expert, Max Annas and/or other FHISER staff members. For more information contact Henriette Gunkel on 043-704 7515 or hgunkel@ufh.ac.za
Click here for the full programme
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AUGUST 2008
Commonwealth scholar building research skills at FHISER
Commonwealth scholar, Kelly Rosenthal, is back in the Eastern Cape running a research methodology course for post-graduate students at FHISER.
The three-month course is based on a similar course at the African Studies Centre at Oxford University, where Kelly read for her masters degree.
Kelly is no stranger to the Eastern Cape as she worked with FHISER on the Communal Land Rights Act project last year. During this time Kelly realised there was a need for more intensive training in research methodology. After pitching the idea to FHISER director, Prof Leslie Bank, Kelly approached the Mandela Rhodes Foundation in Cape Town.
"They don't usually fund this type of project but they were very keen, " said Kelly who will be joined in teaching the course by three other Oxford graduates, Dr Tracy Carson, Tim Gibbs and Donald Goodson, who all are running the course during their summer break.
The course is designed to assist post-graduate students in writing their dissertations and the approach is interdisciplinary taking in the disciplines of history, anthropology and political science.
"The students are amazing at Fort Hare. We are having incredible debates," she added.
The next step was to look for funding to provide for a group of Fort Hare students to go to Oxford to undertake a similar type of exchange.
Rosenthal completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Cape Town majoring in social anthropology, history and environmental science. She went on to complete an Honours degree in Social Anthropology in 2004. Her research was based on the activities of the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee, and the attending issues of the commodification of basic services in post-apartheid South Africa.
In 2005/6 she read for an MSc in African Studies at St Antony's College, Oxford. She is currently doing her PhD at Oxford on a Commonwealth Scholarship.
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AUGUST 2008
FHISER present papers at national Anthropology Conference
Eight students and the FHISER director, Professor Leslie Bank will be presenting papers on their current research at the Anthropology Southern Africa Conference in Cape Town from 31 August to 3 September.
The papers will touch on a variety of issues ranging from land reform in Zimbabwe, heritage and meanings in the Eastern Cape to material life in new townships in the province and the argument that intellectuals are not engaging with critical issues facing the country but "hiding in ivory towers". READ MORE on the Postgraduate students' page.
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