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26 August 2025 | Story Precious Shamase | Photo Teboho Mositi
From the left: Dr Grey Magaiza, Deputy Director of CGAS; Prof Vasu Reddy, Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research and Internationalisation; Prof Cias Tsotetsi, Campus Vice-Principal: Academic and Research; and Prof Jared McDonald, Assistant Dean of the Faculty of The Humanities.

The Centre for Gender and Africa Studies (CGAS) on the University of the Free State (UFS) Qwaqwa Campus recently hosted the Biennial Gendered Worlds Lecture. The series focuses on the meaning and interpretation of the social, cultural, and political environments where gender is constructed, experienced, and contested. The recent lecture featured a captivating address by Prof Vasu Reddy, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research and Internationalisation. Titled The Taste(s) of Intimacies: Reflections on the Trifecta of Food, Sexuality and Love in Gendered Worlds, this lecture invited the audience to explore the complex, interconnected nature of these three domains.

Prof Reddy opened his talk by describing food, sexuality, and love as ‘grammars of intimacy’ – a powerful metaphor suggesting that these elements encode cultural scripts, regulate bodies, and create opportunities for resistance and transformation. He intentionally used the term ‘trifecta’, borrowed from horse racing, to highlight the synergistic yet sometimes incompatible relationship between these three elements. He explained that this trifecta provides a profound framework for understanding how intimacy is experienced, negotiated, and theorised within different cultural and gendered contexts.

The lecture was structured in several parts, beginning with a personal reflection on Prof Reddy’s upbringing. He shared an intimate image of himself and his grandmother, explaining how her kitchen was not just a domestic space for cooking and nurturing. He motivated that his grandmother’s kitchen was a site of ‘gendered and feminist pedagogy’. He described it as a space not just for nourishment, but also for learning. This is where he learned about nurturing and care through observation and storytelling. This personal anecdote set the stage for a broader discussion on the socio-political dimensions of food, which he described as a ‘mode of enquiry and practice’ and an ‘object of power’. He noted that food preparation is a form of gendered labour and highlighted how apartheid structured food along racial lines, turning dishes such as ‘chakalaka’ from symbols of struggle and survival into commodified examples for elite consumption.

Moving on to sexuality, Prof Reddy argued that, like food, it is a domain where intimacy meets regulation. He referenced the work of Zanele Muholi, a renowned visual activist, whose photography in projects such as Somnyama Ngonyama (‘Hail the dark lioness’) confronts histories of colonialism and gendered violence by asserting the visibility and dignity of black and queer bodies. This aspect of the lecture emphasised how sexuality is not merely personal but is deeply shaped by cultural and political scripts.

In another component of this lecture, Prof Reddy delved into the complex nature of love. He proposed that love, though often idealised as apolitical, is deeply structured by cultural norms and power relations. Drawing on the work of scholar Sara Ahmed, he described love as a ‘sticky emotion’ that adheres to certain bodies and relationships, shaping how people are nourished, touched, and recognised. He highlighted that love is often a struggle – a messy, unpredictable, and transformative process.

Prof Reddy also discussed the ‘affective dimension’ of these matters, explaining that emotions are not just personal feelings, but social forces that shape bodies, spaces, and politics. He linked this to the concept of ‘taste’, suggesting that it is not only a sensory experience, but also an affective one, laden with social context, pleasure, and sometimes shame.

Throughout the lecture, Prof Reddy emphasised the entanglement of the private and public realms, asserting that intimacy is not confined to the bedroom but is shaped by public politics and collective norms. He concluded by presenting resistance and liberation as central to the discussion, positing that food, sexuality, and love can be sites of radical acts. He cited bell hooks, who argued that intimacy can be a powerful force for healing and self-definition in the face of systemic oppression.

For Prof Reddy, gendered worlds are not just sites of oppression, but also spaces of possibility that prompt further questions to make sense of ourselves.

In his closing remarks, he invited the audience to consider the profound questions his lecture posed: What does intimacy taste like? Who gets to taste it? And how is that taste shaped by gender, power, and history? He encouraged everyone to critically engage with these questions – not just intellectually, but personally – to reimagine intimacy as a public, relational, and transformative practice for building a more equitable world.

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International Year of Crystallography attracts science experts from across the globe
2014-10-13



Video: Discover what Chrystallopgraphy can do for you
Video: Celebrating Crystallography: An Animated Adventure

Summit programme

The third world summit in the International Year of Crystallography (in Africa) will be hosted by the UFS Department of Chemistry here on the Bloemfontein Campus. Prof André Roodt, Head of the Department of Chemistry, was elected as the President of the European Crystallographic Association in 2012. Earlier this year he unveiled the Max von Laue 'Plaque' in Posnan, Poland.

The Pan-African Meeting of the International Year of Crystallography consists of a congress and summit. The details are as follows:

Congress
12–15 October 2014
CR Swart Senate Hall, UFS Bloemfontein Campus

Summit

15–17 October 2014
CR Swart Senate Hall, UFS Bloemfontein Campus
Summit opening: Wednesday 15 October 2014 at 14:00 in the CR Swart Senate Hall

This event will be opened and attended by:
•    the UFS Rector and Vice-Rector – Profs Jonathan Jansen and Corli Witthuhn;
•    the acting Director-General of the Department of Science and Technology – Dr Thomas Auf der Heyde;
•    the acting CEO of the National Research Foundation – Dr Gansen Pillay;
•    the UNESCO Vice-Director for Science Extension – Dr Jean-Paul Ngome-Abiaga (Paris, France);
•    the representative of the Executive Committee for the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr) – Prof Santiago Garcia-Granda (Oviedo: Spain);
•    the marketing director of the IUCr – Prof Michele Zema (Pavia, Italy);
•    the President of the European Crystallographic Association (ECA) – Prof André Roodt, who will officially open the summit on Wednesday 15 October 2014 from 14:00–15:30.

Presenters from across Africa and Europe will deliver papers at this event which will be attended by more than 100 delegates from twenty-plus countries, including Spain, France, Italy, Croatia, Germany, Russia and India.

Numerous crystallographic research areas will be covered. This includes:
•    powder diffraction,
•    small molecule crystallography,
•    biological crystallography,
•    industrial crystallography,
•    surface crystallography,
as well as techniques such as
•    electron microscopy and
•    synchrotron work.

“At this event we hope to establish an African Crystallographic Association,” said Prof Roodt.

The United Nations declared 2014 as the International Year of Crystallography. It was recently officially opened at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, France, by the Secretary General of the UN, Ban Ki-moon.

The International Year of Crystallography celebrates the centennial of the work of Max von Laue and the father and son, William Henry and William Laurence Bragg. More generally, it celebrates what crystallography can do for humanity – which proves to be a significant amount.

 

 


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