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13 August 2019 | Story Rulanzen Martin | Photo Charl Devenish
Biennial lecture
Front, from the left; Prof Heidi Hudson, Dean of the Faculty of the Humanities, and Prof Jack Halberstam. Back, from the left; Dr Stephanie Cawood, Director of CGAS; Prof Puleng LenkaBula and Dr Nadine Lake; Gender Studies Programme Director.
It was an unconventional gender studies lecture where we had to imagine a changed world in which “we should rethink gender, sexuality and the body and how we must get rid of the world in which gendered and sexual embodiment operates in the way it does”. This is how Prof Jack Halberstam introduced his lecture with the topic Exit Routes: After Gender, After Feminism.

“Contrary to a whole tradition in queer studies of world-making, my project is about world unmaking, un-building and undoing.” Prof Halberstam said at the Biennial Humanities and Gendered Worlds lecture which was hosted by the Centre for Gender and Africa Studies (CGAS) on 7 August 2019. 

 “The title of the talk, exits routes, is a reference to the fact that I am going to argue that we literally have to imagine the end of the world we currently live in,” he said. One could engage in the speculation of a utopian world. We are far beyond this point of capitalism and right-wing populism, environmental decline. We cannot talk about utopianism until we get rid of this world.” 

Prof Halberstam is a leading scholar in gender studies 

Prof Halberstam is a professor of Gender and English at Columbia University in the US. “Prof Halberstam is known on the questions of gender and queer theory but also what it means to pursue the dignity in the diversity of humanity,” said Prof Puleng LenkaBula, Vice-Rector: Institutional Change. Student Affairs and Community Engagement. 
“We must understand the role of the Humanities in understanding, analysing and bringing about theories that enable the interrelationship with the cosmos, other humanity, and the idea that we must always be at the centre in the defining the systems.” 



News Archive

Open Day 2011 attracts thousands of prospective Kovsies
2011-05-04

 

Prof. Jonathan Jansen, Vice-Chancellor and Rector, enjoying the Open Day with two of our students
Photo: Gerhard Louw

Low academic standards may be an accepted norm in society, but will by no means be tolerated at our university. This was the core message of the speech made by Prof. Jonathan Jansen, Vice-Chancellor and Rector, to learners, parents and teachers at our university’s annual Open Day, which took place on Monday, 2 May 2011.

Approximately 6 000 people gathered on our Main Campus in Bloemfontein, where they were introduced to senior staff members and deans and allowed to visit each of our seven faculties. Exhibitions from residences and student organisations also competed for the attention of prospective students.

Prof. Jansen assured attendees in the Callie Human Centre that they can look forward to quality education and an academic climate which aims at producing only the best academics and citizens for South Africa. He explained the steps that are being taken to improve the quality of education at the UFS, such as raised entrance criteria and compulsory class attendance in some of our modules.

He said the raised standards have already proven to increase pass rates, as well as attract high-quality students, as we managed to attract 146 students with six or more A-symbols in Grade 12 this year. This is also evidence in the university managing to deliver two Rhodes scholars, Sannah Mokone and Dirk Bester, in one year.

He also assured parents of their children’s safety, reminding them that not only is Bloemfontein one of the safest cities in South Africa, but students at the UFS are also taught to respect each other. “Students are treated as humans and everyone is treated the same. We are all Kovsies here.”

A record number of 1 000 applications for admission to the UFS in 2012 were received and bursaries to the value of R150 000 were given to prospective students during the day.
 


Media Release
4 May 2011
Issued by: Lacea Loader
Director: Strategic Communication
Tel: 051 401 2584
Cell: 083 645 2454
E-mail: news@ufs.ac.za

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