Thembisa Waetjen
| Research: I am interested in politics of gender and culture, and the way they inform debates about modernity and national identity. My book, Workers and Warriors: Masculinity and the Struggle for Nation in South Africa, explored these themes in the case of Inkatha during the 1980s. More currently, I am working on two projects which highlight the role of civic organizations in shaping ideas about modernity and communitarian identity in segregated Durban. With my colleague Goolam Vahed, I am editing a series of letters between Ahmed Kathrada and Zuleikha Mayat (1979-1989) and writing a history of the "Women's Cultural Group" of Durban. |  |
| Teaching: I lecture in the second year History course, "Law and Society" and, with Keith Breckenridge, co-teach the honours level seminar "African States in Comparative Perspective". I also teach a first year Internet Studies course called "News Media and the Internet Society", which charts the political roles played by the printed newspaper prior to the internet era, and then explore the ways in which these functions are being changed by the proliferation of publishing forms available on the internet Before coming to UKZN, my teaching was in Feminist Studies and in Sociology, with courses such as Political Sociology, Development studies, Feminist Theory, Social Inequalities, Sociology of the Body, and Deviance and Social Control. I have also taught in the pre-First Year "Access" programmes both at UKZN and at University of Oregon, with courses in African and U.S. History. |
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| waetjent1@ukzn.ac.za |