Page 34 - Research & Innovation Report 2020

HUMANITIES

“We need to keep up the #TotalShutDown and #AmINext
campaigns against rape and murder of women in this country so
that gender based violence is not treated as an event but as the
Exciting cohort of pandemic that it is.”

postdocs and postgrads Gqola says despite the ongoing pandemic of violence, there is
some hope. “We are starting to see a shift in consciousness and
we are seeing women’s capacity to work together across party
The Chair is attracting an exciting cohort of political, race, culture and age lines. We are seeing this happening
postdocs and postgraduates, for example: in South Africa and worldwide.

Postdoctoral researcher Dr Viraj Suparsad “Some of the successes are clear, we are seeing predators being
is a film studies scholar interested in looking fired and sent to jail; we are seeing some clear institutional change.
comparatively at how femininity and masculinity In El Salvador, for example, for the first time they now have
are portrayed in popular feature films from the gender specialist judge-only courts dealing specifically with sexual
Global South, notably films produced in African violence and femicide.”
locations and films produced in south Asian
locations. He analyses how independent film
makers in southern and west Africa compare to
Nollywood and Bollywood.

PhD student Aphiwe Ntlemetza’s work is around
cultures of violence (sexual harassment, rape,
coercion, grooming) and gender based violence
at different public higher education institutions,
and how to dismantle them.

Master’s student Khanyisa Sitoto is looking
at women’s arts and crafts projects in the rural
Eastern Cape and how to read these as both
spaces of artistic practice and economic productive
processes that tell us about how women negotiate
their position in gender societies.
PhD student Boitumelo Mampane is working on
masculinities and femininities in television series,
particularly soap operas, to see how different scripts
of gender and of masculinities and femininities
circulate in society in creative genres as cultural
and generative sites of the larger South African
gendered landscape. How they not only reflect
attitudes towards gender – they also create them.

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