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06 November 2020
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Story Rulanzen Martin
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Photo Supplied
Dr Tronél Hellberg, UFS alumna, completed her PhD in Music from the OSM in 2018.
The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown has posed many challenges. Not only has it distrupted our normal way of life it but has created a ‘new normal.’ Even in these trying times, alumni from the University of the Free State (UFS) have adjusted to the new normal by going above and beyond to make it as normal as possible.
One of these is Dr Tronél Hellberg, an alumna from the
Odeion School of Music at the UFS, who has supported Grade 12 learners by presenting free online prescribed music theory classes. The classes are beneficial for learners following the CAPS or IEB curriculum. “I trust the online videos will assist learners and teachers to get through this challenging Grade 12 year,” says Dr Hellberg. She has
recorded more than 38 live videos on her
G-Sential Theory of Music Facebook page.
The recordings are accessible to Grade 12 learners and their teachers at no cost. Dr Hellberg established the
G-Sential Theory of Music in 2007 and has since published 20 theory of music books.
Apart from assisting in teaching, one of her main objectives is to reach less fortunate learners who do not have access to music teachers. “Grade 12 music literacy requires an accumulative understanding of theory of music,” she says. With her initiative she also aims to “fill any gaps” to solidify knowledge and information which might still be unclear.
UFS hosts first ACS Institute held on African soil
2015-12-08
The first ever Association for Cultural Studies (ACS) Institute hosted on the African continent is taking place on the Bloemfontein Campus. At the event are, from the left: Prof Jonathan Jansen, Vice-Chancellor and Rector of the UFS; Prof Jean Comaroff, Alfred North Whitehead Professor of African and African-American Studies and Anthropology at Harvard University; Prof Helene Strauss, Chair of the Department of English at the UFS; and Prof Gil Rodman, Chair of the Association for Cultural Studies and Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Minnesota.
Photo: Johan Roux
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The University of the Free State (UFS) is hosting the 2015 conference of the Association for Cultural Studies (ACS) Institute – the first time for this international event to take place on the African continent.
From 7 – 12 December 2015, some of the world’s leading scholars in cultural studies are taking part in the conference on the Bloemfontein Campus. The event has been organised by the UFS Department of English in collaboration with colleagues from other departments in the Faculty of the Humanities.
The ACS is the foremost international association for scholars in cultural studies, and has been hosting the biennial Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference since 2006. In 2011, the ACS held its inaugural institute at the University of Ghent (Belgium), followed, in 2013, by one at the Alpen-Adria University Klagenfurt (Austria). As the 2015 meeting of the institute is the first to be held in Africa, the organisers aim at highlighting the contributions that scholars from our continent and other (post)colonial contexts have made to cultural studies, even as it engaged many of the long-standing theoretical concerns generated for the field by scholars from the Global North.
Themed ‘Precarious Futures’, the conference explores how cultural studies might assist in charting more equitable futures by reflecting critically on the cultural, economic, and political trajectories within which precariousness – a state increasingly anticipated for the planet – might be altered. Experts in a diversity of disciplines are sharing their perspectives in the form of seminars and lectures.
Keynote lectures are delivered by Prof Jean Comaroff (Harvard University), Prof John Erni (Hong Kong Baptist University), Dr Jo Littler (City University London), Dr Zethu Matebeni (University of Cape Town), and Prof Handel Kashope Wright (University of British Columbia).
In her opening lecture on Monday 7 December 2015, Prof Comaroff addressed the challenging relationship of law, detection, and sovereignty in contemporary African polities within the South African post-apartheid context.
Topics discussed include climate change; the archives of everyday life; cross-racial intimacies; ethnography; meritocracy; cultural studies and human rights; China and globalisation; gender, sexuality, and race; and governance, embodiment and the work of care.