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30 May 2019 | Story Rulanzen Martin | Photo Rulanzen Martin
Africa Memorial lecture
From left; Dr Stephanie Cawood, Director of CGAS; Prof Francis Nyamnjoh; Prof Heidi Hudson, Dean of the Faculty of the Humanities, and Dr Engela van Staden, Vice-Rector: Academic
Ubuntu is a word we all know and, to some extent, relate to. Prof Francis Nyamnjoh aimed to delve and explore this African philosophy when he presented the 2019 Africa Day Memorial Lecture with the topic Ubuntuism and Africa: Actualised, Misappropriated, Endangered and Reappraised. 

The memorial lecture is hosted annually by the Centre for Gender and Africa Studies (CGAS) at the University of the Free State (UFS) to coincide with Africa Month celebrations. Prof Nyamnjoh holds a PhD from the University of Leicester in the UK. He is currently a professor of social anthropology at the University of Cape Town and has been a scholar in sociology, anthropology and communication science at universities in Cameroon and Botswana. The lecture took place on 22 May 2019 in the Equitas Auditorium on the UFS Bloemfontein Campus.

“When I saw the topic I thought this was very contemporary. We at the university decided to include the Ubuntu principle in our learning and teaching strategy,” said Dr Engela van Staden, Vice-Rector: Academic. 

Ubuntu as a binding factor for interconnectedness 

We live a world in which we cannot stand alone as the principle of Ubuntu tells us that we are who we are because of our interconnectedness with other people. “It is important to recognise that you stand on others to be tall,” said Prof Nyamnjoh. 

“We are the product of ongoing conversations on interconnectedness."

“I have argued that, in the spirit of Ubuntu, Africans, their identities and mobilities are part and parcel of the experience of being human in a world on the move. And their contributions are needed in today’s world more than ever. 

“I have broached the context of globalisation and histories of unequal encounters that have shaped relations in Africa and beyond under global capitalism."

“Even as it is increasingly seriously tested by opportunism, Ubuntuism, sometimes a reality and sometimes an ideal, brings hope and redemption, and offers a feasible framework for participatory and inclusive emancipatory social change,” said Prof Nyamnjoh. 


News Archive

Prof. Cynthia Miller-Naudé delivers inaugural lecture at the university
2012-07-03

 
Prof. Cynthia L Miller-Naudé
5 July 2012

Prof. Cynthia L Miller-Naudé recently delivered her inaugural lecture as senior professor at the University of the Free State.

The lecture also served as the opening key note address to the joint conference of the Linguistics Society of South Africa, the South African Applied Linguistics Association and the South African Association for Language Teaching.

In her lecture, Prof. Miller-Naudé focused on The Case of Ellipsis in Biblical Hebrew. She examined the interrelationship between poetic style and the grammatical rules of a language by describing the ways in which grammatical rules may be relaxed or even broken to achieve a particular style within poetry. She illustrated her lecture with examples from Biblical Hebrew, the language of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament).

In Biblical Hebrew, it is very common to find ellipsis (words that are missing) in poetry, but they are always “missing” in ways that create stylistic effects. Prof. Miller-Naudé concluded her lecture by demonstrating that the stylistic effects of ellipsis can be described and explained using the theoretical model of cognitive poetics.

Prof. Miller-Naude was born and educated in the United States and is a leading authority in the fields of Biblical Hebrew linguistics and Bible translation.

 

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