UJ History Seminars

The Department of History hosts a regular seminar series. The seminar is a forum for scholarly works in progress and aims to be a rigorous intellectual space of scholarly exchange within the university and the wider academic community.

We pre-circulate the seminar paper via the departmental email list, and in order to enhance discussion we strongly encourage seminar participants to read the paper before-hand.

Should you wish to be added to our mailing list or present your work please email Stephen Sparks at sjwsparks@uj.ac.za.

2025

15/04/2025

Rachel Sandwell (Cornell University), ‘Gossip, innuendo, and intimacy: Micro-histories of ANC exile’

18/03/2025

Khumisho Moguerane (University of Witwatersrand), ‘A cloth over the mirror”: Oneself and Another in new post-apartheid biography’

2024

08/10/2024

Paul Edwards (Stanford University), ‘A Lightning History of Artificial Intelligence’ (Faculty of Humanities Distinguished 4IR Lecture)’

06/08/2024

Laura Mitchell (University of California, Irvine), ‘Domestic Space, Intimate Surprises: The Bonds and Bondage of Enslaved, Khoisan, and Settler Women in the 1825 Koue Bokkeveld Revolt’

30/04/2024

Bruce Hall (University of California, Berkeley), ‘Rethinking ‘precolonial Africa’ or, an unlikely history of capitalism in nineteenth-century Timbuktu’

19/03/2024

Khumisho Moguerane (University of Johannesburg), ‘Apartheid’s moral scaffolds: Noni Jabavu and the moral worlds of the southern African frontier’

2023

07/11/2023

Dr Sarah Delius (University of Johannesburg), ‘Burn Down the Town: Violence, Diplomacy, and Redrawing the Sierra Leone/Liberia Border 1885-1917′

29/08/2023

Zolani Ngwane (Haverford College), ‘Looking back, I know that I was not a man that day’: Nelson Mandela and the Ambiguities of Tradition in South Africa.’

18/04/2023

Mark Hunter (University of Toronto), ‘The rise and disregard of alcohol and drug rehabilitation centres in South Africa: from maladjusted workers to the underserving poor’

14/03/2023

Johann Tempelhoff (North-West University), ‘Reflections on Emfuleni’s water woes on the banks of the Vaal River’

2022

04/10/2022

Hilary Lynd (University of California, Berkeley) and Thom Loyd (Cardiff University), ‘Histories of Color: Blackness and Africanness in the Soviet Union’

23/08/2022

Meghan Healy-Clancy (Bridgewater State University), ‘The Politics of Friendship in the Federation of South African Women’

26/07/2022

Athambile Masola (University of Cape Town), ‘Native Girls in Scotland: tracing the travels of Tause Soga, Martha Kwatsha, Letitia Ngceni, Deena Nzanza and Sana Mzimba’

10/05/2022

John Aerni-Flessner (Michigan State University) and Grey Magaiza (University of Free State), ‘Basotho and the Bantustans: Long-Term Impacts of Historical Borders on Borderlands Communities in QwaQwa and Lesotho’

19/04/2022

Sarah Emily Duff (Colby College), ‘A Change of Life: Writing Hormonal Histories of Empire’

22/03/2022

Marijke du Toit (University of the Western Cape), ‘Daughters of Africa and the gender politics of urban segregation in Durban, 1935-1937’

01/03/2022

Linell Chewins (University of the Witwatersrand), ‘Stealing Dingane’s Title’: The Fatal Significance of Saguate Gift-Giving in Zulu King Dingane’s Killing of Governor Ribeiro (1833) and Piet Retief (1838)’

2021

12/10/2021

Cynthia Kros (UCT) and John Wright (UCT), ‘Journeys into the Archive of South Africa’s Deep Past’

21/09/2021

Keith Breckenridge (University of the Witwatersrand) (Faculty of Humanities Distinguished 4IR Lecture), ‘4IR in Historical Perspective’

10/08/2021

Deborah Posel (University of the Free State), ‘South Africa’s consumer revolution of the late 19th /early 20th century’

11/05/2021

Joel Cabrita (Stanford University), ‘Written Out: The Work and Life of Regina Gelana Twala’

13/04/2021

Jeff Peires (Fort Hare), ‘The Story of Dosini’

21/02/2021

Vusi Kumalo (Nelson Mandela University), ‘The Marshall Square Prison Escape: The Liliesleaf Farm Trust archive, Politics of Memory and the Creation of Historical Archives’

2020

31/07/2020

Abraham Mlombo, ‘The War Years, 1939-45: War Economy and Military Engagement in southern Rhodesia’

11/07/2020

Janeke Thumbran, ‘Configuring a Liberal Sociology: Afrikaner Sociology and the ‘Coloured Question”

11/03/2020

Stefan Berger, ‘Has history-writing become more self-reflexive about its relationship with identity formations?’

18/02/2020

Shahid Mathee, ”Colonial rule and the post-colonial state in two twentieth-century Timbuktu chronicles

2019

8/10/2019

Sandra Shell, ‘The Oromo children of Lovedale, South Africa: Prosopography and Profiles from Horn to Hope’

17/09/2019

Hlopnipha Mokoena, “Strict Observers of Truth”: Colonial Imagination and the Disciplining of the Frontier’

27/08/2019

Stephanie Quinn, ‘Infrastructure, Ethnicity, and Political Mobilization in Tsumeb, Namibia, 1946-87’

30/07/2019

Sarah Duff, ‘Training for Citizenship: The Women’s Suffrage Movement and Modernising the State in Early Twentieth-Century South Africa’

23/07/2019

William Beinart, ‘Priorities for Land Reform in South Africa: a pragmatic approach’

7/05/2019

Jill Kelly, ‘Gendered Militancy and Congress Networks in Rural Natal in 1959’

16/04/2019

Vusi Khumalo, ‘African Education and Land Rights on the Rand: The Tsewu court case and the Wilberforce Institute, 1903-1905’

19/03/2019

Marc Epprecht and Allison Goebel, ‘Exhibiting African Art in Canada: A Decolonizing Community Project at Queen’s University?’

19/02/2019

Sebabatso Manoeli, ‘Remembering the ‘Golden Years’: Nationalism in the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) Training Camps in Gambella, Ethiopia, 1983-91′

2018

20/11/2018

Kerry R Ward, ‘From Ground Zero to Zero Tolerance: Human Trafficking Responses in Houston, Texas’

16/10/2018

A.G. Hopkins, ‘Rethinking the American Empire’

2/10/2018

Lize Kriel and Natalie Fossey, ‘The ‘reading African’ in the hierarchy of Others as visualised in the periodical Der Missionsfreund, early 20th century’

14/08/2018

Linell Chewins & Peter Delius, ‘The North Eastern Factor in South African history: Re-evaluating the volume of the slave trade out of Delagoa Bay the and the nature of its impact on its hinterland in the early 19th centuries’

24/07/2018

Sacha Hepburn ‘Working Motherhood, Childcare and Children’s Work in Zambia’

15/05/2018

Glen Ncube ‘From Rome to Rhodesia: Nutrition, health and the adaptation of FAO’s global Freedom from Hunger Campaign in late colonial Zimbabwe’

24/04/2018

Deborah Posel ”Getting inside the skin”: advertising, market research and “the black consumer” in apartheid South Africa’

20/02/2018

Deborah Gaitskell, ‘Mentoring Mandela’s Generation: Challenges for a Methodist Mission School in Segregationist South Africa’

13/02/2018

Katie McKeown, ‘The Ingwawuma Land Deal, Conservation and Animal Belonging’

2017

29/08/2017

Jacob Dlamini, ‘A transnational history of the Kruger National Park’

23/08/2017

Claire D. Clark, ‘Peter Bourne’s Drug Policy and the Perils of a Public Health Ethic, 1976-1978’

8/08/2017

Khumisho Moguerane, ‘A Home of One’s Own: An exploration of home-ownership in the borderlands of post-apartheid Eastern Free State and Lesotho’

25/04/2017

Todd H. Leedy, ‘But Did They Really Race? The Early History of Black Competitive Cycling around Johannesburg’

28/03/2017

Catherine Burns, ‘City of women – Johannesburg: The Early years 1900 to 1940

28/02/2017

Susanne Klausen, ‘Sex, Shame and Suicide: Policing White Male Heterosexuality in South Africa during Apartheid’

14/02/2017

Katharina Fink ‘FAVT: Future Africa Visions in Time’

2016

10/08/2016

Linda Gordon, ‘Leadership and Followership: The Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955-56′

12/04/2016

Linda Chisholm, ”Fate comes to the Mission Schools’: Fire at Bethel, 1953′

15/03/2016

Jeffrey Murray, ‘Once upon a time at Thermopylae: The Reception of the Battle of Thermopylae in the Golden Age of Children’s Literature, 1860–1920’

2015

21/04/2015

Liz Gunner, ‘Song, Identity and the State: Julius Malema’s “Dubul’ ibunu” Song as Catalyst’

2014

13/05/2014

Elizabeth Pleck, ‘Historian as Friend of the (U.S.) Court’

8/04/2014

Luise White, “The Last Good White Man Left”: Rhodesia, Rhonasia, and the Decolonization of British’

18/03/2014

Alex Lichtenstein, ‘Post-Wiehahn Shop Floor Battles for Union Recognition in Natal’s Textile Industry’

2013

29/10/2013

Joel Quirk, ”Native’ Marriage as a form of Slavery: Reflections on Colonial Classifications in Africa’

6/08/2013

Edward Cavanagh, ‘Empire’s Companies in Southern Africa: How the VOC got its Land’

23/07/2013

Michael Mahoney, ‘Towards a History of African Unemployment in South Africa: Bringing Political Economy ‘Back In’ to South African Historiography’

19/07/2013

Heather Hughes, ‘Family history, gendered biography: individual and social biography-writing in South Africa’

11/06/2013

Dan Magaziner, ‘Studios and Schools: The Ambiguities of African Art Teachers’

14/05/2013

Julie Parle, ‘Searching for the okapi: thalidomide in Africa’

12/03/2013

Shahid Mathee and Mauro Nobili, ”From history to mystery in a recent English translation of a seventeenth-century Timbuktu chronicle’

12/02/2013

Andrew MacDonald, ‘Bars, Barmaids and southern Africa’s Indian Ocean World, 1870s-1950s

2012

16/10/2012

Lindie Koorts, ”A mutually corrupt relationship’: The Kruger state, the Dynamite Concession and the Transvaal Concessions Commission, c. 1900′

18/09/2012

Helen Ludlow, ‘What’s the fuss about chocolate? Ghana, cocoa, colonialism and globalization

21/08/2012

Charl Blignaut, ‘Untold History with a Historiography: A Review of Scholarship on Afrikaner Women in South African History’

24/06/2012

Lynn Thomas, ‘A Transnational History of Biomedical Opposition to Skin Lighteners’

19/06/2012

Susan Newton King, ‘Slavery, Race and Citizenship: The ambiguous status of freed slaves at the Cape in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

22/05/2012

Shula Marks, ‘Social Medicine: common sense or utopian dream? The South African experience in transnational perspective’

24/04/2012

Nicole Ulrich, ‘Heads of the Hydra in Southern Africa: rethinking proletarian community and traditions of protest in the Cape of Good Hope, c. 1652-1770’

20/03/2012

Jimmy Pieterse, ‘Dictionaries and Discourses of Deviance’

28/02/2012

Jonathan Hyslop, ‘The Strange Death of Liberal England and the Strange Birth of Illiberal South Africa: British Trade Unionists, Indian Labourers and Afrikaner Rebels, 1910-1914’