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Since its establishment in 2006, the CHR has offered a space to think about what it means to be a university in Africa. Read more about the itineraries of thought and practice that have animated the CHR over the last ten years, and about what's to come.

Re-vitalising the Humanities

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A Retrospective of the Centre for Humanities Research
The Curricular and the Global, the Tropic and the Taxonomic

Convening an interdisciplinary and geographically diverse group of humanistic scholars and public intellectuals, primarily from Africa, the Cape Town Global Humanities Curriculum workshop offered a venue for discussing the ideas, methods, and practices of “the global” – both in relation to the local and the regional and as a critical step towards creating an intellectually challenging and institutionally effective global humanities curriculum.

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CHR Fellows and Faculty Win at National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences Awards

The CHR congratulates Heidi Grunebaum, Kurt Campbell, Reza Khota, and Kitso Lelliot on winning a number of important awards at this year’s National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences Book, Creative Collection and Digital Contribution Awards ceremony.

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This year’s giant puppet parade in the quirky Klein Karoo town of Barrydale, celebrates and reclaims the power, mythologies and awareness of the local River, the Klein Huis Rivier that runs through the Tradouw valley, and its age old significance to the people and animals of this scenic, fertile part of the Langeberg.

River and Redfin

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The CHR and Net Vir Pret Annual Giant Puppet Parade and Performance, Barrydale,

16 December 2018

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Appointment of Professor David Scott as Extraordinary Professor 2019-2021

Professor Scott will be working with the Mellon-funded supranational project, Other Universals: Theorizing from Postcolonial Locations on Politics and Aesthetics.

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Mandla Mlangeni receives 2019 Standard Bank Young Artist Award

The CHR congratulates Artist in Residence Mandla Mlangeni on being a recipient of the 2019 Standard Bank Young Artist Award.

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The 2016 Barrydale Puppet Parade and Performance, called Olifantland, a multilingual visual theatre show featuring five majestic life-size elephant puppets by Adrian Kohler from Handspring Puppet Company in collaboration with UKWANDA Puppet and Design Collective.

The 2016 Barrydale Puppet Parade and Performance

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Under the theme of The Humanities Improvised, the annual meeting gathered together artists, art commentators and humanists from member institutions to reconceptualize the relationship between art and the humanities against the backdrop of a rapidly changing world of work, politics and technology.

The International Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI)

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The CHR hosted the 2017 annual meeting of
The DST-NRF Flagship on Critical Thought in African Humanities of the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape (CHR) in collaboration with the SARChI Chair in Social Change at the University of Fort Hare (SARChI) and the Interdisciplinary Centre for Global Change at the University of Minnesota (ICGC), held the seventh Winter School on the theme “The Humanities Improvised” in 2017.

Winter School

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2017 REPORT
The Flagship on Critical Thought in African Humanities of the Centre for Humanities Research (CHR) at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) constitutes an arena for scholarly exchange, artistic creation and public inquiry into African political subjectivity, art and society, and technology and the human.

Statement on the DST-NRF Flagship

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Academic Programme

Andrew W. Mellon Chair of Aesthetic Theory and Material Performance

The Andrew W Mellon Chair Aesthetic Theory and Material Performance holds together several interdisciplinary modes of enquiry.

Publications

The CHR’s programmes are driven by academic research and scholarly exchange. This is evident in the CHR’s publication record, which contains monographs, edited collections, journal articles and more