Institutions of Public Culture
2005-2006 Fellows
Research Fellows
Julian Jonker (University of Cape Town, Department of Private Law) pursued two projects during his time at Emory: Silence of the Dead and Requiem for Prestwich Place. Both projects draw on research for his recently completed MPhil. thesis from the University of Cape Town entitled Recognizing the Dead: An Ethical Response to the Exhumations at Prestwich Place, Cape Town, 2003-2005. Prestwich Place is an area of Cape Town where, at the start of a luxury apartment development, a major slave heritage site/burial ground was discovered, a graveyard for the city’s underclass that was used until the mid-19 th century. Jonker’s thesis focused on the ethics of memory, forgetting, and recognition in the context of the Prestwich Place discovery and exhumations. In Silence of the Dead he plans to develop this work into an interdisciplinary account of memory, mourning and silence that will take the form of a book or series of articles. Jonker’s second project, Requiem for Prestwich Place, will develop a sound memorial, drawing upon his interests in sound design and the requiem form. Requiem could be adapted to engage with a public space, as an exhibition, or as a site-specific memorial. Jonker’s formal academic training is in law and legal theory. His research interests include memorialization and the ethics of memory, intellectual property and media law, and music and performance traditions of South Africa. He has worked as a freelance journalist and cultural critic, produced music and performance projects, and also performs as a DJ and sound artist. (Spring semester)
Corinne Sandwith (Department of English Studies, University of KwaZulu Natal) recently submitted her PhD thesis on how oppositional political groups against racial separation and apartheid in South Africa developed a tradition of literary criticism and debate that operated outside the academy. During her time at Emory, Sandwith expanded her thesis into a book-length study on Culture in the Public Sphere: Recovering a Tradition of Radical Cultural-Political Debate in South Africa, 1938-1960. Her project explores an undocumented tradition of cultural-political debate through a range of publications (newspapers, magazines, journals) and public arenas (reading groups, book clubs, theatrical associations, debating societies). It will both recover and document this “lost history” of cultural-political criticism and debate by those involved in “counter-public” circles of the South African public sphere from 1938-1960. At the same time, Sandwith explores alternative reading communities and practices and a range of marginal, subaltern positions in South Africa at the time. Sandwith received her PhD from the University of Natal in South African literature, and has published numerous articles in literary journals. (Spring semester)
Carol Brown (Durban Art Gallery) was in residence at Emory for six weeks during the spring semester. While at Emory, Brown worked on a publication on Art and AIDS in South Africa. It will include contributions that discuss art and social issues around AIDS by experts in the field, including social commentators, social scientists, and art commentators, along with examples of art about AIDS. The book will promote the importance of making art about AIDS and will also discuss art about AIDS in the context of South African resistance art and African art about healing. The publication will complement an exhibition on Art and AIDS organized by UCLA’s Fowler Museum of Cultural History, which Brown has helped organize while serving on an international advisory committee for the exhibition. The exhibition will open at the Fowler Museum in November 2006 and then travel to South Africa, Brazil, and India before ending in New York. For the past ten years, Brown has served as Director of the Durban Art Gallery, leading its transformation from a small, elitist institution to a community resource serving a diverse public both at the museum and through community events sponsored by the museum. She recently finished her Masters thesis on the transformation of museums in post-Apartheid South Africa. (Spring semester)
Dissertation Completion Fellow
Cheryl-Ann Michael (University of the Western Cape, Department of English) is working on a PhD thesis entitled The Construction of Identity in South African Women’s Autobiography, 1980-1994. Autobiographical narratives provide the means through which she explores the ways that black South African women imagined the future nation, and themselves within the nation, before the first democratic election took place there in 1994. Michael will examine how sentiment and religious discourses figure in these imaginings, as well as the place of metaphor in the autobiographies and the relations of editor and author in their production. Making comparisons between the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa and the abolition movement in the 19th century United States, she will also compare the South African texts with 19th century women slave’s narratives. Michael received her M.A. in English from the University of Cambridge, England, and has published several articles in literary journals. She is a member of the editorial board of the journal Social Dynamics, director of a research project on The Book in Africa and co-director of a project on African Aesthetics. (January through September 2006)
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